Another great year behind me and it’s time to recap a bit!
Reflecting goals from the past year and setting up new ones for the upcoming year is important and beneficial for mindset and growth (personally and professionally). I’ve heard 🙂
Making it public is effective brain hack for boosting the commitment, hearing feedback, support, and some “hate” :). I think.
This year, I’ve decided to skip the STATISTICs section and talk about the projects and goals a bit more. I visited only 10 countries in 2018 so the numbers would be quite low (not cool enough). 2017 was quite crazy, I visited 22 countries.
TABLE OF CONTENT
- PROJECTS:
- Webcreate.Me Magazine
- Traveling Lifestyle Magazine
- Nomad Cruise (+ some clients work)
- Property investment in Georgia
- REFLECTING GOALS from 2018
- NEW GOALS for 2019
- TRAVEL TIMELINE
WebCreate.Me Magazine
Competition in the WordPress niche is constantly growing and it’s been quite a struggle to keep up since the beginning of 2017! Good news is that my brand name is quite “general” so I can move to some other niches quite easily.
by the way, WebCreate.Me is for sale! 🙂
So this year, I’ve been posting (testing) various types of content from Web development, Web Design, Online marketing etc. … aka. “throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks”, quite a bad strategy but I didn’t have time, money and motivation to work on something better. In the meantime, I was building quality backlinks as always and kept updating my WordPress themes & plugins collections (to keep making some money). Nothing really changed since then 😛 I don’t spend much time on this project anymore. Just maintaining and “throwing sh**”.
At the beginning of 2018, the website was attacked by competition again in a very sophisticated way and 2 of my most popular articles were taken down from a google search (due to violating DMCA). Long story short, it was complete FAKE and it took around 20 days to get it back and I ended up loosing around 1500USD.
Some examples from Webcreate.Me:
Gross income: 1500-2000 USD/monthly
Website traffic: 12k/monthly
Traveling Lifestyle Magazine
Most of the progress happened here! Traveling Lifestyle has been growing, we are reaching 300 articles soon and around 25k/monthly visitors.
I’ve been putting a lot of effort in delegation of my work, monetizing and growing the magazine in various niches. I have one virtual assistant and 2x writers and many guest post writers at the moment. ~ here is where I struggle, I like doing things, publishing content, marketing and getting my websites done! not to give to other people to do it but I can’t grow like that 🙁
New niches examples:
⦁ amazon product reviews: Best Portable Generators for Camping
⦁ best backpacker’s hostels: Hostels in Amsterdam or Hostels in Tokyo
⦁ luxury hotels: Luxury Hotels Phuket or Luxury Hotels Bangkok
Gross income: 600-1000 USD/monthly
Website traffic: 25k/monthly
Nomad Cruise (+ few other projects and clients)
In March, I started working with Nomad Cruise & Homebase, which has been amazing so far and feels great being part of the NC team and taking part in building this conference & community. I help out with tech stuff, such as booking system, website, automation, and some growth hacking stuff as well.
During 2018, I also worked with a few other friends/clients:
- AIPF – Spanish Language School in Malaga
- Coworking Days
- Travel Concept Solutions
- Wolfhouse® – Unique venues & retreats for teams
- Tobiasguitar.com
Property Investment (Georgia
This has definitely been the biggest experiment in 2018 (and one of the biggest in my life). I’ve purchased an apartment (studio 32square meters) in heart of Gudauri SKI RESORT in Georgia.
NOTE: It’s a pure investment, no feelings.. I’m not planning to live in mountains 3000m above the sea level.
Why?
- not expensive (42000USD TOTAL) – 32000USD (white frame) + 6600USD reconstruction + 3k furniture
- wanted to invest and start educating myself in property investment – had to start somewhere 🙂
- good / fast return – estimation 500-700USD per month
- this investment allows me to become TAX resident in Georgia – saving on TAX in the future maybe around 5k/year
There are other good and bad factors about the investment and about the way how the country works but I took the risk for a few different reasons:
- I think the country is growing in tourism and it’s getting lots of new flights from Europe and the Middle East. Also, interest to go visit the region is growing (AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA, IRAN + GEORGIA)
- SKI resort has a lot potential and it’s growing (slowly). They have been building new lifts and they will keep building. Studio is in the center of SKI resort, next to the best lift so it will grow with a resort in terms of value and income (every year).
- PERSONAL REASON (BRAIN HACK): I needed some good push to start working harder and focus more on my projects. I’ve put myself outside of comfort zone and I literally put ALL I HAD into the investment and became SUPER BROKE and I still needed to make money for reconstruction and furniture in upcoming months. Being broke was bad but pushed me to work hard & smart again.
Reflecting goals for 2018:
- work more / travel less – DONE 100%
- less buses, less trains, less hostels.. 😀 – DONE 90%
- reach 100k/month visitors on travelinglifestyle.net – it’s around 25k now, and it’s groooooowing, so will be done soon. – NOT DONE
- delegate more work – DONE 50%
- double my current income – DONE (maybe around 50%)
- spend more time with family – DONE 80%
- travel abroad with my parents – DONE 100%
- do more sports / more often – DONE 100%
- cut drinking & smoking to the minimum – DONE 80%
- read more books! let’s say 8 this year;) – NOT DONE (only 3 books)
- organize nomad meetups (maybe a bigger event) – NOT DONE but I took part in organizing Nomad Cruise, so partly DONE
- 2x Nomad Cruises – DONE 100%
- launch product or book on amazon.com – NOT DONE
- do some volunteering again and support more charities – DONE, just a bit
- spend at least 6 months in one place 🙂 – DONE 100%
NEW GOALs for 2019:
- spend more time in one place and keep maintaining my routine
- reach 100k visitors on travelinglifestyl.net
- delegate more work (monetizing, emailing, marketing of my projects)
- write monthly income reports from my projects (for example: like JohnyFD)
- double my current income
- launch product on Amazon
- at least 3 visits of Slovakia this year
- BURNING MAN FESTIVAL
- spend at least 4-5 months in Barcelona this year
- read at least 5 books
- travel with my parents (at least 1 trip)
DESTINATIONS, where I lived and where I traveled in 2018:
Bali
My year started in Canggu, Bali! It was very needed longer stop for 4 months after almost year of constant traveling. I focused mainly on my work and spent a lot of time in Dojo Coworking, in my opinion, the best coworking space for digital nomads! I had lot’s friends around from Nomad Cruise, Nomad Train or other digital nomad events/conferences.
I was living a super relaxed life and I had a lovely place with the best view ever! I was also very active and did a lot of sports. I went to gym 3-4x time a week, Muay Thai lessons 1-2x a week, football game 1x a week and surfing 1-2x a week. Around 2 days a week were doubled, so for example gym in the morning and Muay Thai in the evening.
What can I say? It was a dream life aka. drinking coconuts, sports, happy Viktor with lots of amazing people around.
Slovakia wedding
In February, I went for a quick visit to Slovakia and went to my BEST friend’s wedding. Most of the time I spent around family and reunited with few friends in Kosice as well but skipped Prague and Bratislava (what I usually don’t).
Georgia (SNB + INVESTMENT TRIP)
Georgia was on my mind for quite a long time for various reasons! I’ve heard snowboarding is amazing and there are some interesting options for TAX residency. So, I’ve packed my s**t and flew from Budapest to Kutaisi. (WIZZAIR has plenty of affordable flights to Georgia from all over Europe).
Well, there was no doubt about skiing conditions! Caucasus mountains are stunning and you can have endless fun at Guduauri Ski Resort.
I’ve met a bunch of random people in the hostel and with some of them we had lots of conversation about investing in Georgia. We exchanged a lot of knowledge and I decided to give it a go and visited agency of the developer in Gudauri Ski Resort. It turned out to be “hot deal” and almost everything was sold out. It was kind of a “now or never” decision and I had just a few minutes to make my mind.
“F**k it, I went for it and it was very tight. I still remember that sweat on my hands when I was signing the contract.”
Barcelona / Malaga
I spent 6 weeks in Georgia (4weeks in Gudauri, 2 weeks in Tbilisi) and I was very ready for some warm weather and another Nomad Cruise trip. I flew to Barcelona and spent around 10 days, reuniting with friends and enjoying the beginning of spring.
Then I headed to Malaga for 2 weeks and definitely loved that place. It could be easily my home base in the future.
Why?
- relaxed vibes, friendly people
- low prices
- beach town (not too big, not too small)
- great weather
- multi-culti 😀
Nomad Cruise 6 – from Spain to Greece
It was my 3rd trip with Nomad Cruise trip but very different from the previous ones. Why?
- It was shorter 9 days
- I was part of the team
- I had SEO workshop
- It was in Europe
Of course, the trip was epic again and for more understanding.. I would recommend just to check the video below:
Italy
After the cruise and I spent a few weeks in Athens and I headed to Rome in Italy to meet my parents. The trip was my Xmax gift for them and it was 1st time ever we traveled somewhere together. LOVED IT!
Barcelona (6 months.. the longest travel break since I left Australia in April 2015)
I took off from Rome and headed to my final destination Barcelona to retire from my crazy digital nomad lifestyle :). At least that was the “plan” but all I wanted, was to take a really long break from traveling. I can confirm, that “travel burnout” is real and I had it BIG TIME.. and still have it.
I’ve got lucky and 2 days before my arrival, I scored a room 1-minute walk from the beach and the Barcelona dream started!
My whole mindset was about resetting my WORK and lifestyle. I needed a big change, shift my mindset, improve everything, boost my productivity and start earning more money because I was completely broke after the investment in Georgia and still needed more money for my monthly payments for reconstruction and furniture. Priority was to rather live a budget life but not take any loan or borrow money from family or friends. WENT WELL! I spent around 350-450 monthly (excluding rent). That’s very low for Barcelona!
I had an amazing routine that I kept the same for the whole time:
- waking up between 9-10am
- run + exercise on the beach for 1 hour
- breakfast
- working from home 11am-2pm
- lunch + walk to coworking space
- working from co-working space 3 pm – 8 pm
- beers & friends & meetups 9pm – 1am
I did more less the same thing every day and I 100% loved that routine and had great results after 6 months. That’s basically my template which works for me and I started applying it in other cities.
For example: works very well now in RIO DE JANEIRO.
Slovakia
In the meantime, I went to Slovakia twice for some family events and reunite with some old friends.
3 visits + family trip to Rome in one year?! That makes me “son of the year” for sure 😀 (comparing to last few years).
Nomad Cruise 7
November kicked in very fast! Barcelona was getting cold and “winter escape plan” was coming up!
I boarded Nomad Cruise 7 and headed for another South American adventure with 493 digital nomads on board 🙂
Brazil
After we made it to Recife, most of us went to Porto de Galinhas and started catching up with work and getting to know Brazilian culture. We spent a great time in Beach Life Porto de Galinhas Hostel and enjoyed cool vibes of this beach town.
Me and two other nomads, headed to Recife and Sao Paulo, before the big New Years Eve reunion of Nomad Cruise 7 in RIO DE JANEIRO.
.. and that completes the year of 2018
Beijos from RIO