Travel Blogging Business Income Statement: Profit, Loss and Taxes

Are you a travel blogger? What is your primary reason for blogging? It is merely your personal space? To make money online? To be famous? To travel the world for free?

Various reasons why people travel and blog about it with passion (one of the weirdest answers was to sleep with random women/men they meet on the road, more like Rock Star/groupie fling)

Regardless of the rationale for travel blogging, if Tutubi's going to prepare an income statement from his travel blog considered as an online business, here's how it will probably look like (of course, most details are not printed due to confidential nature.)

TRAVEL BLOGGING INCOME(LOSS) STATEMENT:

REVENUE SOURCES
Google Adsense:
Nuffnang
Advenue
Ambient Digital
Text Link Ads
Affiliate Marketing
Ad Space Leasing
Sales from e-books publishing

LESS: EXPENSES

Capital Expenditures (CAPEX)

Digital Camera DSLR (pretty basic): PhP60,000.00
Mobile Phone (iPhone 4S): PhP40,000.00
Mobile Phone (Cherry Mobile Flare): PhP3,999.00
Laptop (Lenovo): PhP45,000.00
GPS Navigator (Garmin Nuvi 1300): PhP7,000.00
Internet Wifi router (bundled with Sun Broadband): 0.0
Backpack/luggage(1 50L, 1 overnight, 1 trolley luggage): PhP5,000.00
Camera Bag: PhP3,500.00
Tripod: PhP4,000.00
Snorkeling gear: PhP1,500.00
iOS/Android App purchases: so far all only free apps
External Hard Drive for backups: PhP4,000.00

Operational Expenditures (OPEX):
DTI Business Registration: PhP300.00
Barangay Permit
Mayor's Permit
Annual Domain Registration: PhP410.00/year ($10.00/year)
Monthly Hosting (free for Blogger)
Monthly phone subscription: PhP599.00 (Globe)
Monthly phone subscription: PhP350.00 (Sun Cellular)
Monthly Internet broadband subscription: PhP649.00 (Sun Broadband)

Travel expenses (see notes below)
Transportation
Accommodations
Food
Travel Insurance

Miscellaneous:
Pasalubong
Souvenirs
Sunscreen: PhP500
Memory Cards

PROFIT (LOSS): ????

ANALYSIS:

Google Adsense, if properly optimized, earnings can be estimated as Pageviews x CTR x CPC (CTR of 3% and CPC or $0.10/click is typical)

What would be your guess if we're going to consider Travel Blogging solely as a business for Tutubi, who declines freebies and sponsored trips/accommodations/meals?

With the high cost of travel and the frequency he has to do it makes travel blogging as a losing business venture but the returns are not in monetary value.

Travel Bloggers should pay taxes even for income earned from blogging their income exceeds the minimum wage earners income or their total personal and additional exemptions (per the Bureau of Internal Revenue); if blogging is part of business in the red without any taxes payable, you still need to file a BIR income tax return as required by law.

Travel Blogging, in Backpacking Philippines (the blog) context, is a non-profit, public service venture. No real profit even with steady revenue but serves the public with independent and unbiased reviews.


CONCLUSION:

After presenting all possible revenues and expenses incurred in travel blogging, what is it that drives most travel bloggers to keep on blogging?

One simple answer: it may not be profitable but the end of it all is HAPPINESS!

Travel bloggers do what they love to do i.e. to see the world and share their experiences to guide others!

HAPPINESS: don't we all want to be happy even when broke? At least we did what we love doing! :P

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NOTES:

Tutubi is only using Google Adsense, Nuffnang, Ambient Digital, and Advenue as revenue sources, Adsense is the biggest channel while the three provides nickels and dimes (sayang din)

Capital expenditures, particularly the camera and the smartphone, are usually replaced every three years typical at most but not unusual to be replaced annually to keep up with the latest versions and trends

Transportation costs include air/ferry/boat/bus/jeepney/train/trike/habal-habal/padyak fares and the following for
roadtrips: gas, toll fees, including vehicle preventive maintenance schedules, parking fees

Travel blogging requires frequent travels requiring travel funds in order to provide constant updates and publish fresh travel posts otherwise readership will drop and also result to lower rankings in search engine results page (SERP) (this is the reason why news sites rank high on Google/Bing/Yahoo, besides being popular and authoritative, churn out lots of fresh pages daily so much to the detriment of typical travel bloggers publishing a post once a week)

How much does a trip costs? The typical minimum is PhP2,000.00 for 2D/1N (backpacking or travel on a shoestring style)
to any amount imaginable depending on the destination.

There are travel bloggers who get free tours from marketers, but Tutubi, typical of him, chose the road less taken not accept freebies, free accommodations in hotels or free meals in restaurants, in order for him to provide independent and unbiased reviews.

Some of those bloggers practice full disclosure which is at least ethical (so you know not to expect too much when it's your turn to visit a reviewed place) and there are also a despicable bunch who do not divulge any freebie received, sponsored trips, free meals/accommodations.

If you're a blogger not into travel, particularly tech bloggers where CPC rates are generally higher than travel, there's a high possibility that you're really earning, travel bloggers though need to cough up money in order to travel (except travel bloggers who are junketeers: the type of travel bloggers whose trips are sponsored (but not disclosed) but not to be trusted for their reviews and recommendations)