Make Money While Cruising - List

[simonpickard]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

It's a constant on the VHF Cruisers Nets, folks looking for help with their computers. You ain't going to get rich...but that's not the point.

Exactly, that's my thinking as well, if I can help out in that area hopefully someone will lend a hand at all the other stuff I haven't got a clue about!

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by simonpickard

Exactly, that's my thinking as well, if I can help out in that area hopefully someone will lend a hand at all the other stuff I haven't got a clue about!

Deal!

If I ever make it to an anchorage again.

[Canibul]

I can play a jews harp....

[Inquisitive]

Where do you play sailorboy

[Reinhardt]

Hi

I make my bread and butter from writing (have done for 30 years), so here are a few suggestions for this thread for those of you that are interested in doing this as an income source whilst cruising.

1. ODesk and ELance are now the market place for freelancers (all types: if it can be done on a computer remotely, this is the place to find work). Don't expect to make much money until you have a portfolio and reputation, but it can be well paid once you build your reputation. You can usually find projects with a timeline to suit your shore time.

2. A blog with Adsense and the Amazon Affiliate Program will make you, on average, $100 a month if it's a good blog that is well marketed. The way to increase this substantially is to add something to the blog that converts visitors to buyers. One idea that is crying out for someone to do is this: set up a nice sailing blog and upload the equivalent of 5 posts a week when you are in a marina and market the blog accordingly. Every marina that you pull in to, write a 10 000 word guide to the marina and surrounds, and convert it to an eBook that you sell on your site. If you visit 20 marinas in year, then that's 20 books you will have on your blogsite, selling whilst you sail and sleep. Don't be naive though, you might only sell 5 to 10 copies of each eBook each month. Still, that's good money, and a product that keeps selling year after year (don't forget to revise every three years or so).

3. If you have a decent video camera, there is the potential to make a small passive income from Youtube. If you film and upload every week and get a small following, and you make sure you allow ads on each video, you can forget about them and these will earn a small amount of money ad-infinitum. As an example, my son made a video of himself when he was 5 making a marble run. Cute video, but nothing special. We put it as the only video on our youtube site, and forgot about it. A year later, I took a look and found that it had 14 000 views and had generated over $150 in ad revenue, which went straight into his bank account. That's just for a marble video. So if you upload 52 videos a year, provided that they are reasonably interesting and inspirational, you should be able to generate $5200 + in passive income. If, for some reason, your video goes viral (say you film a whale landing on a kayak), then you could have a nice little earner on your hands.

4. Micro stock photography is huge nowadays. If you can take a decent photo and use photoshop, iStockphoto and Shutterstock will accept your images and sell them for you, paying a royalty for every download (ad infinitum). I know guys who have a static portfolio of around 100 images on these sites, and make a regular $5000 a year from those images, year in, year out. The sites usually indicate images that are in high demand too. For this year and the last 10 years, there has been an extreme shortage of photos of very old people of any nationality available for their customers: so there you go! They have strict quality controls, so make sure you read them first!

5. Same websites also have a market for micro stock sound, so if you have a small audio kit and a decent editor on your computer (i.e. Adobe Audition), you can make some money too, recording the sounds of gulls and wind in your rigging etc...

I guess the beauty of 2, 3, 4 and 5 is that once you upload something, it keeps on earning income for years with no additional input. Perfect for people who cruise!

It can be done: you just have to think a little differently about things.

I don't have any affiliation with any of the sites I have mentioned.

PM if you want any clarifications or additional info about my suggestions.

Cheers

Reinhardt

[Vino the Dog]

Reinhardt,

That is all very good information for writers. Please tell me:
What would you estimate the percentage of a.) blog writing, and b.) Sales of photo, art, or graphic images, is for use in advertising?

I like the marina guide/book suggestion too.

[demacsea]

I do much the same as Reinhardt.

When you think about it, we cruising sailors are perfectly placed to write a blog - or to turn it around, blogging is ideally suited for cruising sailors.

The very nature of cruising means there's always plenty to write about; events on passage and at anchor, extraordinary sights at sea, the fascinating people we meet, adventures ashore and any manner of other unique experiences. And zero investment - we've all got laptops and digital cameras aboard, haven't we?

I explain exactly how I do it in my article Making Money Through Blogging...

Why not give it a go?

[SV THIRD DAY]

When we were actively cruising, we were making $150 to $200/mo from our blog. www.CruisingCorner.com gives you the ability to make Adsense money from Google as well as through affiliate ads. Free sites like Sailblogs makes the money off your blogs from Google adwords so why not make that money yourself!

[svHannabel]

Tons and tons of good information in this thread, which just reinforces the fact that there are nearly an infinite amount of ways to make money while cruising.

I just finished compiling the collective wisdom of 4 veteran cruisers who are all earning money while sailing by asking them to answer two simple questions. It really boils down to taking action, being motivated and identifying your core skills. Take a read here for the details: Earning Money while Cruising - Lessons from the Pros.

[jyoors]

How do i setup a youtube account that will pay me?

[msponer]

Originally Posted by jyoors

How do i setup a youtube account that will pay me?

They emailed an enrollment link when one of my videos had a couple thousand views. There's now a section in the control panel to enable ads for each video. I don't know if there's a way to set it up before you have a lot of views.

[jyoors]

Ok thank you, i will wait until i have a lot of views and see what happens! these are great ideas of how to make money while underway thank you!

[Reinhardt]

It has always struck me that a simple indigenous crafts/art ebay business would be a winner too. I know someone travels to north Africa every year and buys up a crateful of local arts and crafts and re-sells them on eBay at home. Things like African Idols and that sort of thing. They buy them for ridiculously small amounts of money, and sell them for very large profits.They buy lovely cowrie necklaces from the jeweller for about 50c, and then sell them online for 13.99. Even after costs, a crateful of products that costs $500 generates s a very good profit! Every time they have a selling session, they sound out what sells and what doesn't, and adjust their buying accordingly.

It strikes me that this must also have potential for most of the cultures in the Americas. There's a ver large demand for indigenous crafts on eBay, it can be run online, and you just need access to a post office.

I guess with a lot of these ideas, we are talking about small business, and with that, the biggest challenge is actually getting yourself motivated to do it.

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by Reinhardt

It has always struck me that a simple indigenous crafts/art ebay business would be a winner too. I know someone travels to north Africa every year and buys up a crateful of local arts and crafts and re-sells them on eBay at home. Things like African Idols and that sort of thing. They buy them for ridiculously small amounts of money, and sell them for very large profits.They buy lovely cowrie necklaces from the jeweller for about 50c, and then sell them online for 13.99. Even after costs, a crateful of products that costs $500 generates s a very good profit! Every time they have a selling session, they sound out what sells and what doesn't, and adjust their buying accordingly.

It strikes me that this must also have potential for most of the cultures in the Americas. There's a ver large demand for indigenous crafts on eBay, it can be run online, and you just need access to a post office.

I guess with a lot of these ideas, we are talking about small business, and with that, the biggest challenge is actually getting yourself motivated to do it.

I have done this in Jamaica and Indoneisa(Bali),Mexico,and imported from stateside into Guam,Saipan..I always try to make my trips at least pay for themselves..

[Reinhardt]

That's good. I think that how seafaring folk have made a living for about 4000+ years, we should continue the tradition!