When we created the website in 2017 the idea was to “monetize it,” which in simple words means: make money with it. However, it was not really about the money for us but rather about having more freedom. As we moved and travelled a lot in that period it would just make more sense for us to have a location-independent job. The idea of running a website that enables us to earn our livelihood was just about that and never one of becoming rich or anything.
Anyway, we thought that by writing about Thai Massage and by listing all Thai Massage schools and trainers around the world on our website that we would easily earn advertisement revenue through the schools and trainers that would be happy to advertise with us. Well, it turned out that nothing was less true.
We thought that within six months after website launch or so we would be able to live from the website, but the reality was that it took more than five years before we could — in a very humble way — and it wasn’t through advertising.
To be honest, we did get some Thai Massage school ads in the first year, but it was really not much. And over time it even got less until it entirely stopped. So, after about a year we knew that it wouldn’t be the way to go. Of course, you then go through all the possible options, which in our situation included online affiliate marketing, online Thai Massage consultancy, selling images of Thailand and Thai Massage, publishing video workshops, courses, and eBooks, and enabling automated ads in our articles that earn money when someone clicks on it (like Google Ads and such).
Hence, we then started trying many different things at the same time. Now, the “online consultancy” thing was a big joke. Nothing came of it. Selling images was totally marginal. Online affiliate marketing brought very little because of the small commissions and the fact that we didn’t have much website traffic. In addition, we didn’t feel happy selling stuff from others.
Automated ads was horrible: not only do you have no control over the type of ads that are shown but the commissions are even smaller than with the affiliate marketing concept. Moreover, you actually need a lot of traffic (like a minimum of 100,000 unique visitors per month) to start making some money that makes sense. And on top of it, it really makes your website looks bad and cheap (at least we thought so), and it makes it user unfriendly and slow with all the slide-ins and pop-ups that come up.
However, what started to work was selling our own eBooks and Video Workshops. Quickly we realized that it would be the thing we needed to focus on. Yes, hard work, a lot of research, but something that worked. So that’s what we did and today we have published more than 65 eBooks and Video Workshops (about 50 books and 15 videos) and we have a whole list of things we still want to write or film.
Then in 2022 something else came up unexpectedly. Something we didn’t even thought about. We suddenly started to receive requests to publish paid guest posts. This only augmented and today we get several requests per day and we publish an average of about three to five guest posts per month. It counts for about 15% of our income. It’s not substantial, but it surely helps to pay the bills.
I suppose that this is it. This is our formula. On the other hand, you never know; some other idea can come up or show up. But at the moment I don’t see any other options than the things we’re doing now. And actually, it’s just fine and we’re perfectly happy with it.
