2019 was our 7th full year of this bizarre little life experiment we are doing. So far, so good.
The majority of what I write here on Go Curry Cracker is driven by my figuring this all out as we go. Thankfully a lot of other people are also making their own way as early retirees, travel hackers, tax geeks, expats, world travelers, nomadic families, and adventurers, and we are able to contribute to our collective well-being in some small way.
This year my attention seemed to be grabbed by:
- tax optimization,
- portfolio longevity/growth,
- the mental transition from employment to fun-employment,
- biking,
- the lost art of laziness and un-productivity.
Based on this year’s blog traffic and profit numbers, perhaps too much on those last two. :p
GCC Business Review
Here are the traffic, revenue, profit, and hours worked on Go Curry Cracker dot com in 2019.
Blog
The following table shows raw blog traffic and profit, with estimates for hours of my time invested based on number of posts.
I guess with 36 posts published this year that means I did nothing for 16+ weeks – that seems about right. (And due to guest posts, total effort might be estimated high.)
| Year | Page Views | Profit (Sched C) | PPM ($/1k view) | Posts written | "Work" hrs/wk | $/hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 108,451 | $0 | 0 | 80 | 12 | $0 |
| 2014 | 289,908 | $1,987 | $6.85 | 44 | 7 | $5 |
| 2015 | 2,481,852 | $36,419 | $14.67 | 53 | 8 | $88 |
| 2016 | 1,706,533 | $28,271 | $16.57 | 28 | 4 | $136 |
| 2017 | 1,384,909 | $54,097 | $39.06 | 29 | 4 | $260 |
| 2018 | 2,015,269 | $70,548 | $35.01 | 51 | 8 | $180 |
| 2019 | 1,347,807 | $57,250 | $42.48 | 36 | 7 | $157 |
| Total | 9,334,729 | $248,572 | $26.63 | 321 | ~7 | ~$96 |
Overall I think this was a great year. With time and effort inline with 2017 levels, page views and revenue were too.
I biked more, wrote less, did almost no marketing or outreach, and took most of the summer off. I even explored selling the blog to allow more time for other things in life such as taking naps, procrastinating, and being sassy on Twitter.
Social Media
Speaking of which…
Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook followers have all increased in the last year, which is nice. The Forum has also grown, and Email subscriptions jumped a lot.
I post more regularly on social media, so if you want to turn your GCC experience up to 11 please follow on those platforms. (pretty please.)
As of January 1, 2020, we have:
- 17,032 Facebook likes
- 14,898 Email subscribers (double opt-in)
- 8,701 Twitter followers
- 6,699 Instagram followers
- 694 Posts in 142 Topics by 274 Members on the GCC Forum
If you aren’t subscribed to the Go Curry Cracker Cool & Crazy Email List, be sure to do that here. All the cool kids are doing it.
$$$
This is what revenue looked like in 2019 from each source:
Advertising – $25,387 (context based ads)
Credit cards – $19,022 (FREE travel! Retail price on our latest rtw trip was $7,000. We paid $200.)
Personal Capital – $5,900 (great cash flow and investment tracking tool. And it is free. Read my review.)
Blog hosting – $2,990 (Read my post on how to start a blog.)
Shopping Portals – $1,225 (see how to Never Pay Retail Again via sites like Ebates and Befrugal)
Convertkit – $1,107 (our mailing list tool. It’s great!)
Consulting – $1,000
Traveling Mailbox – $990 (our digital mailbox, read my review)
World Nomads – $735 (travel insurance)
Amazon.com – $492 (books and stuff)
Elegant Themes – $300 (our blog Theme provider)
Betterment – $0 (meets expectations)
Other – $5,895 (income from smaller sources and other blogs)
Total – $64,043 (A 20% reduction over last year – full 2018 revenue details at that link.)
Not shown in the numbers above are cost savings we get through AirBnB & Raise referrals. This is money we didn’t have to spend thanks to readers signing up and using their services.
AirBnB: $893 (some examples from Europe.)
Raise: $55 (discount gift cards – $5 off first purchase.)
Total: $948
Expenses run ~5% of revenue, which brings real profit in around $61k. On paper, the home office deduction reduces that another few thousand, and Jr is able to contribute a bit to his Roth IRA thanks to charging me modeling fees.
2020 Focus
For 2020 I expect I’ll continue to bike, nap, procrastinate, be sassy on Twitter, play with spreadsheets, and write about the strange things I think about.
If there is any topic you are interested in that you think would be a good fit on this blog, let me know in the comments!
I’ll also continue to answer questions on the Forum and for those who want more individual attention with their early retirement goals and aspirations.
For overall GCC website health, I recently did a ton of site performance optimization – it should load much faster. I also did a bit of SEO, kinda, sorta – it’s really boring. And I even decided to learn a bit of javascript by writing some cool (imho) calculators.
Check em out:
- Tax calculator (could be useful between now and April!)
- Self-employment tax calculator
- Solo 401(k) Contribution Calculator
- ACA Premium / Subsidy calculator
We are currently in Japan for a ski vacation (20 cm of fresh snow today!) so I’ll check back in next week. Thank you for making 2019 a wonderful year!
Hitting the slopes
Thanks for reading!
Been thinking of Starting a Blog? Our step-by-step guide will have you up and running in 30 minutes for less than the price of a monthly latte.
Thank you for sharing your numbers, Jeremy.
Someday, I hope to achieve the life / blog balance that you seem to have mastered. I have yet to figure out how to slow down. Still love what I’m doing, though! And the winters in Spain are much nicer than those in the upper Midwest.
I’ll pre-congratulate you on pageview # 10 Million, which should arrive by summer at the latest. Maybe sooner with the recent improvements and changes you’ve made.
Cheers!
-PoF
Yah sure you betcha.
Nothing says you can’t be productive. Full steam ahead if it makes you happy.
Just curious if you or other find personal capital nearly broken with some multi-factor investment sources. I have 2 or 3 that just won’t update making it nearly worthless.
Few suggestions for topics
Is your 401k to big part 3 (you left us hanging)
How to find good redemption options for travel rewards. I’m good at collecting but don’t seem good at finding good value redeeming.
The travel one is a good suggestion. I use my points to subsidize travel but I don’t have the patience to do the research to figure out how to be more optimal in my redemptions.
Yes, still need to do part 3… this year for sure!
PC seems fine to me. I had to manually characterize some of the things in my old work 401k since they aren’t standard funds, but once that was done…
Just wonder since you mentioned 401k, I assumed you may have some company stock, does Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) work in your favor?
I don’t have any company stock.
You’ve written about an interest in maybe moving the family to California sometime in the next several years. Blog post idea: after your annual “here’s how we did our taxes for the past year” post, I’d love to see a “here’s how we would have done 2019 had we lived in California” post. Assuming the same income, would you have gone after maximizing the ACA subsidy or would you still have done capital gain harvesting, what would your federal and state tax returns look like?
You know, do that “what if we had lived in California?” thing like the old sitcoms did where you look up and distant, slowly rub your chin, and the screen starts turning wavy… and you come out the other side with a floral print shirt and golden locks carrying a surfboard under one arm.
I did a CA budget and analysis that was a sortof imaginary life in Cali riff. (the linked post and next 2 or 3.) More of that?
Another great year! Thank you for being transparent with the blog income. It seems to be getting rarer by the day among bloggers.
Also appreciate you being laid back / lazy. Too many FIRE people are annoyingly productive after ditching the 9-to-5, which is fine. But since I plan for my FIRE life to be more like yours, I appreciate you showing that being unproductive is OK. Also a big fan of Rootofgood.com for those same reasons.
Cheers!
Justin might be even lazier than I am. Much respect.
Haha yeah, if there was a ranking for laziness / leisure in early retirement, he will probably have the top spot.
Sweet ride. Do you ride that board all the time or only when there is fresh pow? Is it magna-traction too? Good info on the blog, but I’m more interested in the winter sports. :) I also dress my kid (and myself) in extremely bright colors…. makes them easier to spot on the mountain.
It’s a rental, but definitely the nicest board I’ve ever ridden.
Jr had a morning lesson and I was able to spot his bright yellow pants even from the top of the 2nd chair.
Very impressive numbers – makes my little blog look puny. I appreciate you sharing the data, and look forward to some good posts going forward!
We all start at the beginning
I always enjoy your chatty meanderings on retirement life … juniors education journey, travel adventures, language learning…. so those topics I like… concerning possible relocation options…. it seems like you have it pretty good in Taiwan… we are thinking of relocating to Vancouver area for retirement… Route to Retire has a good series on retirement in Panama… On YouTube Our Rich Journey…has a new series on relocating to Lisbon, Portugal with 2 kids … worth looking at too … many tempting places…
Always love hearing about your finances at the end of the year. It really helps stoke the fire for my own path to FI. The good news on my part is I have just hit the 5 year mark on my FI date but if the market keeps going like it has, it might be more like 4 years. I’m not sure how excited you get about the politics in the US but for a topic, I would be interested to see an article about what you think of Yang’s UBI proposal. If something like a UBI were adopted in the US, I think it would have a profound impact on the FIRE community. I hope you enjoyed the slopes.
I haven’t looked at Yang’s specific UBI proposal, but I always figured the land owners would just raise rents equal to the amount of whatever UBI everyone got.
fwiw, I like the dqydy negative income tax calc to explore the idea.
Baller! Congrats on another nice blog income year.
I’m definitely focused on trying to optimize Financial Samurai more in 2020 to pay for healthcare and childcare/preschool costs. $2,380/month for healthcare premiums a month is outrageous! But at least it’s a business expense.
I hope to get back to living the early retirement dream by the end of 2022.
Let’s do this!
Sam
Is early retirement really something you are interested in? Seems like no?
If the definition of retirement means being able to make money from my website and take care of my kids, then absolutely!
Early retirement is the bomb!
Hence, I’m inspired by your site and other retirement sites on how to monetize more.
Very eye opening what I’ve learned so far after I started focusing on ER monetization. Lots of money to be made!
S
I like real life examples and I would love to read a few cases reviewed like you did a few years ago. I believe you dropped them because it’s more profitable to do it privately. I liked the one about a couple who retired to Chicago. They were very open about their financials and their plans. In general, I like reading about families who retire fairly youngish but still with kids in the house.
What can I say, people have all kinds of strange beliefs.
Congrats on a great 2019. You worked a lot less than I did, made more money, and had more fun. Truthfully, I’m envious and hope to get there someday. Nice job!
Thanks, it worked out nicely I think. Some people made more than me / worked less / had more fun. For others, it was different.
Seems like a great year for you too!
Congratulations on such great achievements! It was worth a lot of effort and time, you inspire me. I want to make sure that my business is passive for me, so that I can also ride a bike and relax. You have a great blog, I like reading your articles, I learned a lot from you. Thank you for sharing these numbers, I was always wondering how much the blog brings. Good luck!