Income Report: November 2017 - Las Palmas to Lisbon, Portugal

Spending November in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria was perfect. The weather was great even though it started getting cold elsewhere in Europe, which actually caused the island to fill up with travelers, friends and nomads. I had a friend visit me from Germany where it was freezing, and she was shocked when she saw it was 30c/86f and sunny here. As I wrote in my last blog post, the Canary Islands is amazing for Europeans looking to escape the cold winters while staying close to home and in the same time zone. However for me, my time was up, literally as my visa had run out and it was time for me to leave the EU. I'm writing this now sitting in a Panera Bread here in Miami, Florida, after two long days of traveling.

I started early wednesday morning flying from Las Palmas to Lisbon, and spending a day in Portugal. I finally got to use my Priority Pass membership that my buddy David Vu gifted me, and got to access the business class lounge at LPA airport, which came in handy since my flight with TAP was two hours delayed. Having my office of the day be supplied with free coffee, food, and drinks was a nice perk. But the best thing about being making money online as location independent entrepreneur or a digital nomad is that even though I've been in the air for the past 9.5 hours and missed three working days due to travel, I'm still earning money passively online while doing so. Here is the breakdown of how much I made this month, from what sources, and what my goals, lessons learned and achievements are for December. Keep reading for the update.

Video Update Report 

Here's a video version of the income report and travel updates for anyone who wants to see my smiling face and get an update in video format. Keep reading below for the screen shots, dash boards and write up.

Biggest lesson learned this month: Having multiple sources of income is the best way to be able to not stress about money, as even if one source goes down or has a slow month, you have others to brig you back up.

Where I Traveled

After almost three months on Gran Canaria and actively exploring the island every weekend, I still didn't manage to see all of it. I ended up revisiting a few hiking places and the sand dunes as I was with friends that hadn't gone before, but in general, there's actually quite a bit to explore if you hop in a car. My biggest regret was not snorkeling more in different locations and not going scuba diving on the island. I kept putting it off because snorkeling just off of the beach in front of my airbnb was so convenient and good that I didn't feel like I needed to explore any further, but on my last week on the island, I snorkeled one of the dive sites and was impressed. If you haven't already, check out my blog post Guide to Gran Canaria for more info on the island.

Aside from the one Canary Islands, I spent a night in Lisbon on long layover before flying to Miami. I still can't believe it was only $321 to fly from LPA to MIA and even though it was economy, I've realized that it's not actually that bad for the 9 hour flight since it's during the day and I'm mostly watching movies upright anyways and not sleeping. Now that I've sold both of my dropshipping stores, I don't get a ton of free airline miles anymore to fly business class so I have to think twice about splurging. If you've never been to Portugal before, I'd highly recomend checking it out, especially during the summer. I think it's underrated and is a better alternative to Barcelona in almost every way and it's cheaper. Here's more info on Lisbon, Portugal in my guide post.  And here's a video of what a day in Lisbon looks like.

My going away dinner in Las Palmas! 

Travel and Living Expenses:

Europe isn't nearly as cheap as South East Asia, but now that I'm back in Miami, I've realized how quickly prices have spiked since I've been away. Here is everything I spent this month from November 1st-30th on travel and living.

Housing: $750 (Airbnb - Las Palmas)

Coworking Space: $125 (Soppa de Azul)
Food and Drinks: $500 +/-

Hostels: $120 (Lisbon + Miami)

Airfare: $321 (LPA to MIA)

Taxi/Uber/Lyft: $40

Misc/Other: $100 +/-

Basic Costs: $1,956 

Course/Video Hosting: $83.25 (Teachable)
Facebook Ads: $0
Email Marketing: $58.92 (GetResponse)
Wordpress Hosting: $4.95 (SiteGround)
Ticket Sales: $25.00 (Ticket Tailor)
Parent's retirement: $1,000 (blog post)

Total Costs: $3,126

*increase from $2,776 last month. 

Priority Pass lounge at LPA Airport

Sunset from Lisbon to Miami

Passive Income Earned

A big secret is that when I sit down to write my monthly income reports, I usually have no idea how much money I made because I usually only login to my accounts once a month. I used to have a better idea when most of my money was made through running my dropshipping stores as I had to update my profit and loss statements almost daily whenever I'd get a new order, but now that all of my money is online and passive, I honestly don't even look until the month end, literally just now as I was typing this.

The good news is that even though some income sources go up and down, I have other ones that cover it and grow. This is why I'm such a fan of creating multiple streams of passive income and why I interview so many different people on the Travel Like a Boss Podcast each week. It's to share with others what works but also for me to get ideas and inspiration myself! For example in Episode 181 this month Anastasia told me about how she made money skinning iPhone (iOS) games before she got into dropshipping, which is something I never even thought about until now. For me my main categories of passive income include: Books sales on Kindle, PDF, and Print, Udemy Courses,  Dropshipping, Making Money through Investments, from Youtube ads, from Affiliate commissions, making Courses, promoting Seminars, phone Coaching, and Podcast sponsorships.

Below are a few screen shots of my dashboards. If you want to see all of them without restriction and learn how you can do the same through affiliate marketing, join my course Income Boss and get access to the confidential case studies where I break it all down and show you step by step how it all works and how you can do the same.

Total Profit this Month: $12,379.97

*decrease from $13,277.55 last month

Income from my various Udemy Courses

Income from ads on my Youtube Channel

Interest earned from my YieldStreet Investments

Dividends and Growth from my Vanguard Funds

Investment Passive Income

The one type of income I don't' include in my income reports is the market gains I get from my index funds on Vanguard. I technically made $4,759.35 extra this month not included in the $13k above, but don't include it in my profits for the month as it's only gains on paper and the market goes up and down. I also don't include money that I've gained from holding cryptocurrencies like Ethereum as money isn't actually made until you cash out and sell them. For those looking in investing in Bitcoin, my advice is to not invest more than 5-10% of your total net worth and "invest" as if you are gambling, knowing that there's a 50% chance of you losing 100% of it. For me personally, I've pulled out of Bitcoin and sold the few I owned as I realized that I was spending too much time watching it go up and down, when I could have better used that time building real businesses and focusing on long term growth instead of speculating in short term success.

If you're in the position I was a few years ago and don't have $30,000 or more to invest. I want you to focus on two things. The first is how important it is to one day have passive income through investments and that it really is the BEST form of passive income. Secondly, I want everyone to have the goal to be able to have enough excess money to be able to invest, on top of paying bills, traveling, and having enough to live off of. If you haven't already, read my book Life Changes Quick to see how I went from having less than $1,000 in the bank to saving up my first $30,000 and how you can do the same with a mindset shift and tangible goal setting.

If you haven't already, I'd highly recomend everyone read Tony Robbin's new book, "Unshakeable." It's a shorter, easier to read and updated version of his last book, Money: Master the Game and should be required reading for everyone who plans to live long enough to retire one day.

Read Tony Robbin's new book Unshakeable

Review of Life Changes Quick on Amazon

Latest review of 12 Weeks in Thailand

Goals and Lessons:

For November my goal were mainly to get my health in order so I could get the most from the upcoming Tony Robbin's conference: Date With Destiny. If you haven't yet, read my blog post on why I'm attending DWD and why I spent close to $5,000 and traveled across the Atlantic ocean to attend. My goals for last month were to cut out 100% of Alcohol, accomplished! And the start creating a baseline of exercise and diet again, which I partially did.

Aside from those two goals, I've been putting off starting any new projects even though I knew I could increase my income by starting another dropshipping store and case studying it. But I knew that I wouldn't want the distractions of customer service or even getting new orders that I need to fulfill during the 6 days i'll be at the event. I'm having someone take care of the technical side of my websites, and a VA delete spam,  while i'm attending DWD just in case something goes down, but aside from big stuff, I'm just going to let my emails and facebook messages pile up for a week, which is something I haven't done in almost 3 years. So if I don't get back to you quickly this month, don't worry, I'll be sure to write back when I'm caught back up.

Here's my journey these past few days from Gran Canaria through Lisbon here to Miami before I heard up to West Palm Beach Florida for the event!

I hope everyone enjoyed this month's update! What are your goals for December 1st-31st? Leave a comment below and keep in touch!

With Love,

Johnny FD

Like this Post? Share it!