Been Traveling for a Year Now. AMA

BeerNuts

BeerNuts

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Sep 4, 2008
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www.beermonies.com
Not sure if any of you mofos care but I have been meaning to post something for awhile.

Last year when Google decided to make the SEO D'Day I lost 90% of my income, my long term girl friend and my apartment. Everything had gone to shit so I decided to say fuck it and left to go travel the world. The last 5 years all I have been doing is working online and watching the travel channel all day. It was time to get out of the office and country I pretty much had no reason to stay at that point.

So I bought a one way ticket to London, put all my shit in storage and got a 45L backpack. Ive lived out of that backpack and done more shit this year than I could have ever dreamed of. Ive seen countless works of art, several world wonders, and hiked to the base of everest.

Here is the route ive taken thus far.

England - London
Scotland - Edinburgh - North Scotland Tour
North Ireland - Dery
Ireland - Tour of South West
Holland - Amsterdam
Germany - Berlin
Poland - Warsaw, Krakow
Hungary - Budapest
Austria - Vienna, Bad Gastine, Salzburg
Germany - Munich
Italy - Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa, Vicenza, Venice
France - Paris
Morocco - Marrakesh, Merzouga, Essaouira, Fez
Turkey - Istanbul, Goreme, Pamukkale, Ephese, Fethiye, Bodrum
Israel - Jeruslem, Eliat
Jordan - Aqaba
Egypt - Sinai, Cario, Luxor, Aswan
India - New Delhi, Jaipur, Udipur, Khajuraho, Agara, Varanasi, Bodhgaya
Nepal - Lumbini, Kathmandu, Everest Base Camp
China - Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Guanzough
Hong Kong - Hong Kong
Japan - Osaka

So if you have any questions ask away. If you want to see the photo albums they are on Facebook so PM me and ill give you my name they are public on facebook.
 
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That's awesome man! How much longer do you plan on traveling? How was Budapest? I've wanted to do the hike to Mt. Everest as well, would love to see pics.
 
Most important question for a gay webmaster forum... which countries had the biggest and smallest penises?
 
BeerNuts said:
The last 5 years all I have been doing is working online and watching the travel channel all day.
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sad-i-know-that-feel-bro_3969556_lrg.jpg


What kind of accommodations did you typically stay in

What would you estimate your total cost for all that travel being?

Favorite place so far?
 
That's awesome man! How much longer do you plan on traveling? How was Budapest? I've wanted to do the hike to Mt. Everest as well, would love to see pics.
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I think I am at the end of my trip now. My savings are down to about 2k at this point and the few things still running online are not enough to sustain the traveling. I am trying to get some things going again but I have been out of work to long so nothing I was doing still works. So its all starting from scratch again. I really wanted to make it into SEA though, we will see.

Budapest was really interesting. The Buda site and the Pest sides are totally different with their architecture and culture. The people were really friendly, girls pretty cute and the beer was crazy cheap. This was also where I met the most Americans on the trip oddly enough. The best thing to do if you visit is to go to the ruin bars. These are really artsy bars that used to be soviet apartments that fell apart and were renovated by local artists and later turned into bars. They are always PACKED with people. Budapest is a huge party town for tourists and locals because the beer is cheap. Everyone speaks perfect english because no one knows Hungarian. Another interesting this is that the people have an Asia look to them since they were once part on Genghis Khan's empire they are very different from the surrounding countries. Economy wise they are still trying to figure things out since they are still recovering from being communist under the soviets.

The everest hike wasn't planed at all and was amazing. I went by my self and flew from Kathmandu to Lukla and started the 16 day hike up to base camp. I had a 20L backpack and only one change of cloths. There are so many other hikers that you just meet people on the trail. Your all pretty much going to the same place anyway. Base Camp is extremely unfriendly and uninteresting its all rich people that have paid companies to take them up Everest. They want nothing to do with the trekkers. So its like a rich tent city. The best part of the trip is the local Sherpa people and the amazing countryside you travel though. You start in rich fields and forests, then to deep forest, then into a rock bog area, then tundra with no trees and low bushes, and finally into glaciers and rock where nothing grows or lives. It was the most beautiful area I have ever seen I will for sure go back and trek more in Nepal. I would go every year if I could.

If its something you want to do here is my advice. DO NOT go with a company. They charge a fortune and have a set schedule. I met a group of 10 Australians on the way up and by the end only 3 made it to base camp. Altitude sickness is serious business!! The only cure is to get to lower altitude until you feel better and they start upwards again. With set times you can't just take another day to feel better by your self. Altitude sickness effects everyone different it has nothing to do with how healthy you are, your fitness level, or your genetics. Everyone can and will get it you need to be prepared for it.

Plan lots of extra days! You can do the hike in 14 days but your odds of getting in and out in 14 days are next to nill. First is altitude sickness you need to plan extra days for being sick. They may or may not happen. You also need extra days to get back to Kathmandu. There are very few flights between Kathmandu and Lukla. All it takes is one or two days of bad weather and Lukla gets PACKED with people that missed their flights. It can turn into a HUGE cluster fuck with the hotels all being full and them running out of food in town. Everything relies on the planes flying out trekker and in food. Do not plan your international flight without enough time to make it to it. Your options are to either hike to Kathmandu an extra 9 days over horrible terrain, pay a helicopter ($5,000) if the weather isn't super bad, or wait it out.

My whole hike cost me like $700 its crazy cheap once you get to Kathmandu. Just make sure you have plenty of time! Nothing is worse than coming all the way to Nepal just to not make the hike because of time limits.
 
Looks like an interesting trip. Funny though after last years update I did better than ever, if you thought it was tough then the last updates this summer have really done it in.
 
JarredLv said:
What kind of accommodations did you typically stay in

What would you estimate your total cost for all that travel being?

Favorite place so far?
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I stayed in hostels usually from 4 beds to 8 beds. This was the cheapest accommodations. My idea is the less money I spend the longer the trip. So rather than live large I lived long.

In the end the average cost is about $1,200 a month. I was always in the off season everywhere I went so that kept costs low. Places like India and Morocco were dirt cheap. But the UK was crazy expensive so it varies a ton. I have been extremely cheap. I stayed in hostels and ate more kebabs than I care to count.

Favorite place is impossible to answer really. I loved Italy, Munich, Austria, Poland, China, Scotland and Japan. Muslim countries are also extremely friendly if you are a guy. I could live in Turkey, Egypt or Jordan very easily but there is a huge lack of women as they are married off young and then confined to houses. Expect to not see many women..

For the opposite I would never go to Israel or India again. The Jewish people are massive douchebags. The whole experience in their country was unfriendly and unwelcoming. Even as a white american I was still treated like shit. Ive got nothing good to say about their country. As for India it was nastiest and dirties place I have ever seen. As soon as you enter the country expect the smell of shit and piss to ALWAYS be present. The people don't care about anything. They piss in the street litter everywhere and and treat the country like a massive garbage can/toilet. Even when there was a garbage can 5 feet away people still just drop food and trash on the floor. The cows are pretty much street cleaners as they walk around and eat all the garbage but add more shit and piss. So if you want to visit India live larger and only go for a week, see the famous shit and get out.
 
Nice to hear your true story. takes guts to tell people you got hit hard, went to travel, and are now broke ( other thread you made ).

Was your prior SEO efforts in client side work or having your own sites ranking? If own site were you mainly an affiliate of products or adsense/cpm earner?
 
How'd you go with travelling 3 months in the schengen zone? Did you stay the full 3 months in the EU?
 
How come you've spent the whole time travelling and not working? (i.e. get some income going while on the move). You must have known this day would come, just interested why you havn't done this. Or have you but couldn't make it work?

I'm waiting for my automated income to reach a certain threshold before I leave. I've done some travelling (not holiday/vacation) before so very keen to get going. However I don't want to have to come back due to finances.
 
eliquid said:
Nice to hear your true story. takes guts to tell people you got hit hard, went to travel, and are now broke ( other thread you made ).

Was your prior SEO efforts in client side work or having your own sites ranking? If own site were you mainly an affiliate of products or adsense/cpm earner?
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Just figured I would help that guy out in the other thread rather than have everyone crash it. We will all go though phases of money and being broke its just part of Entrepreneurship why hide it.

My SEO sites were my own and were promoting various affiliate offers or had ads on them. I have never really done client work. Odds were that I would try something new and their site would eat it. I was always afraid that if I had a client depending on me something I would do would end up wrong in the end. If I had any clients back then they all would have eaten it also.

I also had several ppc campaigns running but they slowly died around the same time. I used to promote SinglesNet for years but when OkCupid bought them out they closed the inhouse affiliate program and the new payout became unprofitable. Traffic sources dry up, offers end etc. This is why we always need to be working and creating new stuff. But since I went traveling I haven't worked in over a year. Most things have died off.

I want to rebuild but I also don't want my entire income to rely on these outside factors. Before shit hit the fan I was working on my own stuff. I was using the affiliate income to move out of the affiliate business but didn't quite make it. I made a ton of cash with diet rebills, face creams and various offers like everyone else but I felt like shit knowing all of the offers were scams. I don't like promoting shit that is just to scam people. Sadly that's all you see on affiliate networks anymore. Ketons, green coffee beans, African mango's its all garbage that doesn't work and relies on offshore rebills. It's a personal choice not to go back into that.

I had started to promote more legit offers but they were harder to convert and paid a lot less which slowed down my business before things went south. I would have made it if Google had waited another year. The few things I have that still make money are the products that I built and own I just didn't make it to building enough of them that were profitable to sustain it.

I figure ill end up working a 9 to 5 again and rebuilding at night, thats how I did it the first time I know I can do it again.
 
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sydants said:
How'd you go with travelling 3 months in the schengen zone? Did you stay the full 3 months in the EU?
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It went well? I did stay the full 90 days in the EU I left Paris to London via bus/ferry on the 90th day of my Visa. 90 Days is totally not enough across the schengen zone its just to many countries. I visited what I could with the limited time they gave me.

AdamC said:
How come you've spent the whole time travelling and not working? (i.e. get some income going while on the move). You must have known this day would come, just interested why you havn't done this. Or have you but couldn't make it work?

I'm waiting for my automated income to reach a certain threshold before I leave. I've done some travelling (not holiday/vacation) before so very keen to get going. However I don't want to have to come back due to finances.
Click to expand...

I did it for personal reasons. It's always been my dream to travel and see the world. But all I did was work and watch the travel channel cursing them for being so lucky. The way I was going it was never going to happen. We all have dreams but not everyone actually gets to live them. American society seems to always be the idea of "some day" I want to. I got sick of it and made it happen. I didn't want the regret of not going when I could have and missed the chance.

Working and travel do not mix. I spent what time I could working but when you are in a totally new country full of awesome things to do and people to meet your not going to just sit and work in a hostel. You also hit visa time limits like the 90 days Americans get across the Schengen zone which is basically ALL of main land Europe. I didn't want to waste time working. I have maxed out a lot of visas just traveling I would have missed a lot of if I worked more.

I did just enough work of maintain a few things and keep stuff I made up to date. So my income is like $300-400 a month now because I kept them afloat.

New ideas didn't really come when traveling. I was to busy trying to bang that chick at the hostel, going out drinking and going on adventures to care about making a green coffee bean diet flog. Also I mentioned in a previous post that I have been trying to move out of the affiliate scene.

I know that when I really get broke that I will just need to get a job and rebuild. I have already gotten working holiday visas for Australia and New Zealand if I want to go live down there for a year.
 
How come you didnt try out the typical cheap places to live, like Thailand? could you not set up digs there and try to get some income going online, rather than going home?
 
BeerNuts said:
Working and travel do not mix. I spent what time I could working but when you are in a totally new country full of awesome things to do and people to meet your not going to just sit and work in a hostel. You also hit visa time limits like the 90 days Americans get across the Schengen zone which is basically ALL of main land Europe. I didn't want to waste time working. I have maxed out a lot of visas just traveling I would have missed a lot of if I worked more.
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Fair enough, I'm reasonably sure I can make it work (although not in a hostel, hostels don't work out cheap for longer terms anyway).

Good luck :)
 
ahhh to be young :)

you should be working on your business and develop the discipline it takes to build a long term sustainable business plan.

why??

because your setting yourself up for failure by these short term wins and hard wiring in your nervous system that you can always make money

it creates a comfort zone level that becomes more difficult to break over time. yes you can always money and you will

but let me tell you from personal experience

traveling the way you travel ( which I have done) and traveling while having large cash flow is very different experience.

Discipline comes in a variety of forms

one way would be to discipline yourself to actually create these systems WHILE traveling the world... this forces you to think ahead of time to plan on resource allocations and also balance time between money and fun.

anyway.. congrats on your experience since most people in the U.S. have never wandered beyond 10 miles from where they were born.


I grew up in NYC and when I moved to the suburbs.. long island.. I would meet people that grew up on Long Island and NEVER visited Manhattan LOL







BeerNuts said:
Just figured I would help that guy out in the other thread rather than have everyone crash it. We will all go though phases of money and being broke its just part of Entrepreneurship why hide it.

My SEO sites were my own and were promoting various affiliate offers or had ads on them. I have never really done client work. Odds were that I would try something new and their site would eat it. I was always afraid that if I had a client depending on me something I would do would end up wrong in the end. If I had any clients back then they all would have eaten it also.

I also had several ppc campaigns running but they slowly died around the same time. I used to promote SinglesNet for years but when OkCupid bought them out they closed the inhouse affiliate program and the new payout became unprofitable. Traffic sources dry up, offers end etc. This is why we always need to be working and creating new stuff. But since I went traveling I haven't worked in over a year. Most things have died off.

I want to rebuild but I also don't want my entire income to rely on these outside factors. Before shit hit the fan I was working on my own stuff. I was using the affiliate income to move out of the affiliate business but didn't quite make it. I made a ton of cash with diet rebills, face creams and various offers like everyone else but I felt like shit knowing all of the offers were scams. I don't like promoting shit that is just to scam people. Sadly that's all you see on affiliate networks anymore. Ketons, green coffee beans, African mango's its all garbage that doesn't work and relies on offshore rebills. It's a personal choice not to go back into that.

I had started to promote more legit offers but they were harder to convert and paid a lot less which slowed down my business before things went south. I would have made it if Google had waited another year. The few things I have that still make money are the products that I built and own I just didn't make it to building enough of them that were profitable to sustain it.

I figure ill end up working a 9 to 5 again and rebuilding at night, thats how I did it the first time I know I can do it again.
Click to expand...
 
BeerNuts said:
Sadly that's all you see on affiliate networks anymore. Ketons, green coffee beans, African mango's its all garbage that doesn't work
Click to expand...

Bullllllllllllllllshitttttttt. Now I know this is a troll post. I've happily pushed these offers for the past two years knowing that I was making a change in the world. My conscious is clean.

Why did your long term girlfriend break up with you? How long were you dating? I've been with my girlfriend for 4.5 years. She's waiting on me to pop the question. I've always told myself that if she breaks up with me I'm taking a one way flight to Thailand or the Philippines and not looking back. I've got an emergency fund set aside in a secondary bank account that will fly me over there and allow me to live comfortably for at least two years.
 
Awesome post bro +rep

How detailed was your initially planned itinerary, and how closely have you ended up sticking with it?

Few things you thought you'd need to bring that you didn't? Few things you didn't think to bring and ended up picking up along the way?

Biggest hidden expenses?

I'm planning a long-term trip right now, leaving in January!

edit: also post pics!
 
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