2017 was our 5th full year of early retirement, world travel, and blogging. Most of the content I’ve written comes from trying to figure things out for myself and our family, and then sharing the outcome. It’s helped create an exciting community of early retirees, tax geeks, expats, world travelers, nomadic families, and adventurers.
Although the blog became a profitable side business back in 2014, any financial benefit was mostly accidental. I typed some words, talked to some reporters, added some links, and (occasionally) cashed some checks.
In 2017 I thought, “Hmm, maybe I should actually try to do some businessy stuff with this thing.”
I think the results were positive.
Big Thanks
First, let me say thank you! This was the biggest year yet for Go Curry Cracker, and none of it would be possible without you. I love the questions and comments that we get with every post, and the personal emails about your advances and successes. Thank you for being part of the Go Curry Cracker Community!
Numbers
Now, let’s talk numbers.
Blog
The following table shows raw blog traffic and profit, with estimates for hours of my time invested based on number of posts. I’ve never tracked hours per se, but this seems about right. (Due to guest posts, hours may actually be estimated high.)
| Year | Page Views | Profit | PPM (Profit/1k view) | Posts written | Hours "worked"/week | $/hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 108,451 | $0 | 0 | 80 | 12 | $0 |
| 2014 | 289,908 | $1.987 | $6.85 | 44 | 7 | $6 |
| 2015 | 2,481,852 | $36,419 | $14.67 | 53 | 8 | $86 |
| 2016 | 1,706,533 | $28,271 | $16.57 | 28 | 4 | $126 |
| 2017 | 1,384,909 | $52,000 +/- | $37.55 | 29 | 4 | $260 |
| Total | 5,971,653 | $118,677 | $19.87 | 234 | 7 | $64 |
PPM and work hours have been trending in the right direction, while page views have not. I like that hourly rate though. PPM (Profit / 1k page views) isn’t a typical performance metric (more so R(evenue)PM), but it’s easier for me to just pull Line 12 of the 1040 than to dig through Schedule C. RPM is maybe 15-20% higher.
2015 was by far our biggest traffic year, which was a stroke of luck with media exposure. We were simultaneously on the front page of Forbes and Yahoo (250k page views in one day!), and had major exposure all around the globe throughout the year.
In 2016, our mainstream press activity declined. (It’s hard to do better than 2015.) Combined with a reduction in new blog posts (aka work), total page views and revenue declined. There is direct correlation between new content and page views, although it is a lesser factor than media exposure.
2017 page views were on track to surpass 2016 through the first part of the year, but then I took about 2.5 months off. Total page views ended the year down. I was hoping for some big boosts from media exposure (“can we send a camera crew to follow you around for a week?”) but that has been slow going. Oh well, you win some you lose some. However, due to the aforementioned businessy efforts, total revenue increased significantly.
Social Media
Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook followers have all jumped in the last year by double digit percentages, which is nice. I post more regularly there, so if you want to turn your GCC experience up to 11 please follow on those platforms. (pretty please.)
Email list growth was also double digit percentage wise, but I trimmed 3,000+ subscribers as I didn’t feel like paying to send emails to people who don’t read them.
As of January 7, 2018, we have:
- 15,614 Facebook likes
- 9,926 Email subscribers (double opt-in)
- 5,293 Twitter followers
- 4,171 Instagram followers
The really cool thing with Social Media is that sharing cool and interesting content generates a ton of page views. On a couple press pieces on mid-sized media sites, I’ve actually been able to send more traffic to their sites than they have to GCC. It’s fascinating how that works.
Btw, if you aren’t on our mailing list, you can signup right here:
$$$
I spent a few hours this year diversifying income sources, and also overhauling the ad system.
Just being able to have other ad companies bid against Adsense means less money for Google and more for me with no other changes.
One great option is media.net. Sign up now for an extra 10% income boost for 3 months.
This is what revenue looked like in 2017 from each source:
Advertising – $13,963 (context based ads)
Personal Capital – $11,800 (great cash flow and investment tracking tool. And it is free. Read my review.)
Credit cards – $8,604 (FREE travel! See how we saved $10,000 on flights & hotels)
Blog hosting – $7,760 (our web hosting company. Read my post on how to start a blog.)
Shopping Portals – $2,205 (see how to Never Pay Retail Again via sites like Ebates and Befrugal)
myFinance – $1,962 (content sharing)
Amazon.com – $1,600 (books and stuff)
Email ads – $1,331
Convertkit – $757 (our mailing list host. It’s great!)
Traveling Mailbox – $732 (our digital mailbox, read my review)
World Nomads – $455 (travel insurance)
Elegant Themes – $237 (our blog Theme provider)
FlexOffers & CJ – $197 (hotels, Turbotax, etc…)
Betterment – $135 (this still surprises me)
Other – $4,933 (income from other blogs)
Total – $56,671 (A 60% increase over last year – full 2016 revenue details at that link.)
Not shown in the numbers above are cost savings we get through AirBnB and Uber referrals. This is money we didn’t have to spend thanks to readers signing up and using their services.
AirBnB: $1,247 (some examples from Europe.)
Uber: $146 (check out my review.)
Total: $1,393
Most interesting to me (and maybe other bloggers) is the Other category. This is income from other people’s sites and blogs. Both Personal Capital and FlexOffers share revenue when you refer new affiliates.
So… if you aren’t already, sign up to become a Personal Capital affiliate or a FlexOffers affiliate. It is the gift that keeps on giving, with ~10% of GCC total revenue.
Our expenses run <10% of revenue, which reduces total profit to ~$52,000. I’ll know more accurately once I do this year’s taxes. About half of our expenses are for free rent and the replacement of my 5 year old MacBook Air. The remainder is primarily hosting and email. I also pay GCC Jr modeling fees.
2018 Focus
It’s pretty easy to look at the list of revenue sources and know where to focus efforts (80/20 rule.)
However, I’m not going to do this. Instead, I want to take a 3 step approach to GCC18:
- Drive more page views (aka Growth)
This will be through writing more content, improving user experience, and pursuing a paid advertising campaign. I’m ok to pay for advertising if it helps new people discover new opportunities or to venture off into the great unknown. (Please, tell your friends!) Obviously this will increase 2018 expenses, on a credit card that pays bonus points for advertising.
- Create and Grow a Forum.
It has become increasingly difficult to reply to every email we get. A forum for early retirees, tax geeks, expats, world travelers, nomadic families, and adventurers will allow me to better scale. (You can try out the new forum here, still in beta. I’ll formally release it soon. There is also a link in the main menu.)
- Become a better member of the personal finance community.
Help me help you grow your site. If you have the expertise to expand upon GCC, I am open to guest posts. (Just a small note: previous guest post authors (and my wife) will tell you I am difficult.) Contact page is here.
Already this year I’ve moved GCC to a faster server and improved caching for a 66% performance improvement. This will improve the experience for everyone, while also reducing bounce rate for new readers. (Next on the to do list: move to PHP7 for additional performance gains.)
Help Wanted
The growth efforts mean I’ll be working more hours, mostly because we will be in one place for the year and Jr is in school. For the first time in 5 years of blogging, I actually have multiple blog posts written in advance. Amazing.
However, I want this to be more of a throwback to my hectic schedule of 2014 or 2015 (e.g. 8 hours / week) not a return to my hardcore 60 – 80 hour weeks. This is a side hustle, not a life. In all likelihood, I publish as many as 52 posts this year (although my working list is much longer…)
So, if you are the person, animal, vegetable, or mineral who can massively improve SEO, orchestrate wildly successful advertising campaigns, grow a popular forum, or make GCC wicked fast and secure, please… let’s talk. I’ll get back to you asap, when I’m not riding my bike, spending quality time with the fam, or on vacation. Next stop: Vietnam!
Thanks for reading! Here’s to 2018 being the best year yet!
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Wow, impressive uptick in revenue considering the decline in page views. You’ve done well Jeremy, no debate here. Just realized that I could easily FI on that revenue… More work to be done (not on the blog revenue, but more on the FI stash).
Cheers mate and good luck in 2018.
Thank you kindly
Our first few years on the road we spent less than this year’s revenue, so that is nice.
Good luck to you in 2018 as well!
$260/hour is an attorney’s rate. Congratulations! Thanks a lot for sharing your journey. It’s an inspiration to the new bloggers like me. I think the first time I heard about your web site was from the CNBC.com. Have a great 2018!
Now if I can only bill an attorney’s hours without actually working an attorney’s hours :)
Thanks Helen! A great 2018 to you too.
Thanks for sharing. The pay rate is great for GCC. Nice job balancing work, retirement, and family time.
I need to become a better member of the community too, but that seem to take a lot of time. I’ll try to go to FinCon this year.
It’s interesting to see your income sources. I make very little income from blogging products and pretty much nothing from credit cards.
Good luck in 2018!
Most of my efforts this year were to diversify income sources. Now that it is all setup, I think income will mostly scale with page views. I think I could still do better with the credit cards.
No FinCon for us again this year as we’ll be in Asia (I think.) We might head to the US a bit during the summer though.
Let me know if you have some guest post ideas.
Congrats on your semi-passive blog income! That’s awesome that you were able to increase it so much with just a few hours for work per week! Looking forward to more great content (and the forum?) this year!
Thanks Laurie. It goes well with my natural laziness.
I’m excited about the forum as it is fully searchable and open to everyone. I answer a lot of questions in email, comments, and facebook, but those formats are only helping 1 person at a time.
Try Pinterest and Flipboard for more traffic.
This is a good idea. Thanks Rosa
Good stuff. My 2017 revenue was up again, not quite as high as yours. I added in the consulting gig 2 years ago and that’s generating a decent level of revenue. I’m kinda loving this whole 4 hour workweek too :)
And how long till you get the Internet Retirement Police showing up to place e-handcuffs on you? You know, with all that “earned” income you’re not really retired any more! ;)
I love the IRP. I wonder how much they make going around to all of the websites and forums and telling people about their interpretation of the dictionary.
I’ve sent a few people your way for consulting. Hope you aren’t working too hard.
Very eye opening! As much as I have tried to stay away from all the social media, it is a necessary evil for blogging.
Thanks again!
A hearty congrats on your success thus far, Jeremy. I like that you are doing it on your terms. Slow and steady wins the race, that’s for sure!
Thanks! It’s good times for sure
Wow, impressive numbers GCC! Over a million page views and $52k in income is mighty impressive!
What I also found interesting was your diversity of income sources. That’s a lot of fingers in many pies!
Love the transparency here!
I think the transparency helps everyone, so happy to share.
Great stuff, very impressive page view and revenue numbers. Very interesting to see your income sources breakdown, definitely something I can work on.
Hmm guest blog post idea is intriguing…(I mentioned it to you in Taiwan before), but now I’m scared lol. :p
you can do it ;)
Impressive hourly rate! 4 hours workweek sounds like a great plan:)
I like the table , it is very interesting to see the variances over the last few years. Thanks for sharing.
my pleasure
That’s awsome!! Glad everything is going well! This site was one of my original motivators and has been a source of a tremendous amount of information. So thank you!
I’m on track for 35 mo to FI(with way too much safety built in). I’m pretty confident in my plan but now my biggest concern is life after FI. What should someone at this stage be thinking about? I enjoy the hard number posts, although at times I have to read those 3+ times, I’m more concerned now about planning a healthy post FI life. Could that be one of the future posts?
The forum looks great!
I probably suck at planning a healthy post FI life :)
What are some of your concerns?
Well I actually meet a lot of older annoying retired people. My parents are a good example. Is it easy to add imagined stress to your life. With the amount of time spent with your family is it more difficult at times? Is routine the key to retired life? I had over two weeks off after a recent surgery—(the longest time in probably 15 years) I had trouble with motivation and energy level, partly due to the surgery but also just no schedule. I’m not sure that would make me happy. I know MadFIintist and others have written about what a big change it was and even one blogger decided to go back to work. What is a day in the life like? What was it like at first with the travels through Mexico and Central America at a relatively decent pace? I’m looking forward to learning new languages, traveling and getting in better shape but what else? I’m sure you’ve interacted with a lot of retired people. What seems to be the common denominator(my son is learning this) to happy retired families?
I could write something about this.
Generally, change is hard and doubly so if it is involuntary. Down time after surgery is harder than down time during vacation or choosing to stop work. The phrase down time even has negative connotation.
Personality is a big factor. Annoying people are annoying, whether they have jobs or not. Positive people are positive, in good times and bad. Be a positive person.
I like the quote: Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time (Lennon, Kierkegaard?) Once you remove the need to exchange time for money, then doing things you enjoy is the important thing. I enjoy naps, for example. I also enjoy unstructured free time. Sometimes I “accomplish things.” Often, I don’t.
Then there are expectations. Learning new languages, traveling, and exercise could each be a full time endeavor. Do you need “something else”? Maybe.
Why is that? (no right answer, but worth thinking about.)
Which leads to the ultimate quote for life: Let it go (Elsa)
I love the quotes! That’s pretty funny. Your right, I probably need to care less and try to “let go” of some of the previous ideas about what I should accomplish. Also try not to become any more annoying then I already am!
Really like that time wasted quote. In fact I think it gets at the core of why FI is so appealing.
Wasting time or potential is viewed as shameful in society. Choosing FI allows one to “waste” time as they see fit and still be able to pay the bills to boot.
Reality is that when we waste time we are just allowing ourselves to pursue things without the societal constraints. This is how we learn to enjoy life.
This year you made about the same as a decent workers salary! Well done. The financial benefits are great, and you are helping keep people like me motivated as we save our pile of early retirement cash.
That’s a good way to look at it… the median household income in the US is around $55k
Impressive stats and earnings! It’s always interesting to see the growth of a blog and how incremental efforts add up over time.
Enjoy your time in Vietnam! Our favourite cities were Cát Bà, Hoi An, and Nha Trang. Hoi An had the best Bahn Mi sandwich in the world (according to Anthony Bourdain)!
This time of year we are going to hang out in the south. I’ll be on the hunt for the 2nd best bahn mi!
Congrats on all your successes thus far. I love your blog and have been an avid reader for a couple of years now. I’m really excited about the forum. I can’t wait to keep learning…especially about the ugly, scary topic of taxes. Thanks for everything! You guys are an inspiration.
That revenue figures leaves me even more interested to see how you optimize your 2017 taxes. (Although of course I know you won’t let the tax dog wag the most-post-tax dollars tail.)
….or even the tax tail wag the most-post-tax dollars dog ;)
Greater revenue means greater challenge, but I think it will still be a good tax year. Stay tuned! :)
posts written dropped,hours worked down but $/hr up ,Profit /view Up and profits up…..i like what am seeing.Considering starting a blog with all this sharing from you Jeremy-congrats
Yessir, I like what I am seeing too. Now just boost page views…
I don’t know if what we did is repeatable, but there are a lot of other great benefits to blogging besides $.
Hey just FYI yesterday and today when I searched for go current cracker on google I received this when I clicked on the search results.
This connection is not private. This website maybe impersonating “gocurrycracker.com” to steal your personal information. You should go back to the previous page.
I figured that might not be great for business. 👎
Yeah, I suppose I should fix that. It means there isn’t a valid SSL cert on the site (true.) Thanks for the heads up
edit: misunderstanding on my part. I actually had an expired SSL cert on the site which was causing this message. All fixed now, thanks for the heads up!!!… I probably wouldn’t have figured this out for at least another week :(
Same thing for me (for Tim’s comment). “This website maybe impersonating “gocurrycracker.com” to steal your personal information. ”
Thanks for sharing your numbers, they are super impressive!
I was in Vietnam during Tet (lunar new year) 6 years ago. It is BUSSSSYYYYY. The whole country is on the move.
Hopefully you guys have your transportation lined up. If I recall correctly, I think we tried to take the train down south and it was fully booked so ended up on a bus with some baby cockroaches and a man who had fungal feet and spread his toes open the whole overnight bus trip.
Yeah, everyone who comes from Google search sees that since mid-October or something.
It will be a busy time, but we now travel based on the school calendar. We aren’t going to move around much, so hopefully no communicable diseases.
edit: Actually, what happened was the place holder SSL cert I had installed expired yesterday and the new one failed to auto install, so everybody trying to use https (e.g. Google search) got this error. Fixed now! Thanks for letting me know.
Very impressive stats, congratulations! It is pretty true that if you do what you’re genuinely interested in, good things can happen. I’ve enjoyed reading your content and look forward to more of it. I’ll think about some content that could be a guest post possibility as well.
Thank you :)
I appreciate your transparency in breaking it down, as we have just begun our blog, and are not yet doing anything to generate $, and wondered what it actually takes. If we wanted to get started with just ONE thing, what would it be? We are also expats, but so far still the working kind. Thanks!
the easiest things to get started are Adsense and Amazon affiliate links.
Good luck!
Those are some impressive stats!! I’ve just started a blog and even if I never make any money from it, I have already achieved many benefits including greater accountability.
I have to ask, with the increase in the Child Tax Credit under tax reform, are you going to have another kid to offset your taxes from the business?
Here’s to an even more successful 2018!
Blogging for accountability has helped us a lot too. 99% of the stuff on here is me just figuring out the details for our benefit, but writing it down and sharing it means I have to really get it right.
Having a kid just for the tax credit probably isn’t the best financial move… but mayhaps we’ll have another one.
I hope you guys do a tax post for 2017 taxes, as we love reading these kinds of posts. You guys are so imspiring!
Pretty cool post, Jeremy. I’m in the early stages of my site, but traffic is picking up. I enjoy your fresh take on many items–and that we actually approach many topics differently. Cheers!