I Made $24K In July — Two Weeks Off-Grid In Canada, Then Building From Mexico City

$18,810.20   |   ~66 hrs worked   |   ~$285/hr
July 2026 Gross Income  ·  Total Hours  ·  Effective Hourly Rate

Let me set the scene for you.

If you thought $20K in May was crazy… wait til you hear what I got up to this July.

From 2–18 July, I was road-tripping around Canada. No client calls, no content calendar, no laptop-open-by-11 am routine — just highways, mountains, and whatever town looked interesting on the map that morning.

Then from 18 July to 17 August, I’ve been based in Mexico City — working remotely on client work and BATW, but also rediscovering the city with completely new eyes. Different neighbourhood every weekend, different market, different rooftop to work from.

 

And in between all of that, I earned USD 18,810.20 (~SGD 24,000).

That’s not a typo, and it’s not me having it more “figured out” than you. For over half the month, I wasn’t working at all. I want to walk you through exactly how the money came in, what I actually did with my time, and why I think this is one of the most encouraging income reports I’ve written — because it proves the business works even when I step away from it completely.

READ ALSO:
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How to Become a Digital Nomad – The Starter Guide
How To Achieve Financial Freedom As A Digital Nomad

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What I Actually Do For A Living

Quick refresher for anyone new here, because “travel blogger” undersells what this actually is by now.

I run Bel Around The World, a travel and lifestyle brand that’s grown from a personal diary into a business with five active income streams. Here’s what each one actually looks like day-to-day.

1. Display Advertising

I’m part of Mediavine, a premium ad network. Every time someone reads a BATW post and sees an ad, I earn a small amount. It’s the most passive line on the sheet — I don’t touch it once a post is live — but it’s also the smallest this month, since it scales with traffic, not effort.

2. Sponsored Posts & Brand Partnerships

Brands pay me to create content — blog posts, social content, destination guides — that genuinely features their product or service. This was my second-biggest earner in July. It’s also the one that requires the most active pitching, which is exactly why I ended up writing an entire framework for it (more on that below).

3. Blog Outreach

This is link-building work I do for SEO clients: securing backlink placements, guest-post opportunities, and outreach campaigns that strengthen their search rankings. It sits right next to my SEO consulting, since most clients book the two together — a website’s authority and its content strategy are the same problem wearing two hats.

4. Freelance SEO & PR Consulting

This was, by a wide margin, my biggest income stream in July — just over half of everything I made this month. I work with a couple of ongoing retainer clients on content strategy, SEO, and PR, using exactly the skills I built running BATW for over a decade.

If that’s something you need help with, here’s where I break down my growth marketing services.

5. Affiliate Commissions

When I recommend a hotel, tour, or travel product and someone books through my link, I earn a commission — at no extra cost to them. Booking.com, Agoda, Klook, and Get Your Guide all have programmes I use regularly.

Sign up to get behind the scenes of running a remote content business!

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My July 2026 Income Breakdown

I still get nervous sharing this so openly. But it’s also the whole point — showing you the real numbers, not a highlight reel.

I’m keeping this high-level, same as always. I don’t name individual clients or share partner details publicly, but every category and every total below is exactly what came in.

Income Stream	July 2026	% of Revenue
SEO & PR Consulting	$9,503.24	50.5%
Sponsored Posts	$5,067.90	26.9%
Blog Outreach	$2,517.68	13.4%
Affiliates	$1,261.54	6.7%
Display Ads	$459.84	2.4%
Total Revenue	$18,810.20	100%

Pro tip: watch what happens when one stream dominates. SEO/PR Consulting alone was over half my revenue this month — proof that the “skills-for-hire” side of this business, built entirely on things I taught myself running BATW, has become just as important as the blog itself.

And The Expenses?

Running this business isn’t free, but it’s genuinely lean — and this month I’m breaking it down further than I ever have before.

July’s expenses came to $922.91, still under 5% of revenue. Here’s exactly where it went:

• Team: $813 to my team who help with the operations, content and outreach sides of BATW
• Tools: Missive ($57.60), Claude ($19.69), Birdsend ($12.72), hosting ($13.37), domain renewal ($1.59)
• Content: Epidemic Sound ($5) for royalty-free audio

That’s genuinely it. No bloated software stack, no agency retainers — just the people and tools that actually keep this running, most of it going straight to the two people who make the “unplug for two weeks” part of this month possible (more on that below).

That leaves a gross profit of $17,887.29 — a 95% profit margin. That’s in line with May’s, and for a business I ran while unplugged for over two weeks, it’s the number I’m proudest of this month.

$17,887.29
Gross Profit · July 2026 · 95% Profit Margin

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How Many Hours Did I Actually Work?

Here’s the part I think you’ll find most interesting about this particular month.

During the 16 days I spent road-tripping around Canada, I worked zero hours. I did still check in daily with my team and peruse my email once a day, but apart from that, my itinerary was pretty action-packed.

Every dollar that came in during that stretch was from work I’d already done:

• retainer clients I’d delivered for earlier in the month,
• ad revenue ticking along passively,
• affiliate links doing their thing in the background.

That’s the entire point of building diversified income streams — some of them don’t need you to show up.

Once I landed in Mexico City on 18 July, I went back to work — though “back to work” from a rooftop café in Roma Norte doesn’t feel like much of a sacrifice.

Here’s a real week from that stretch, tracked hour by hour:

Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
5h 16m	4h 46m	2h 41m	3h 2m	5h 39m	3h 22m	8h 23m

That’s roughly 4h 44m a day on average once I was back at work — which, spread across the 2 weeks I’ve been in Mexico City this month, works out to around 66 hours worked in July.

~$285/hr
Effective hourly rate for July 2026
$18,810.20 ÷ ~66 hours worked = ~$285 per hour. That's up from ~$241/hr in May — and this time, half the month wasn't worked at all.

Same as I said in May: that rate isn’t magic, and it isn’t luck. It’s years of underpaid, unglamorous work finally compounding.

I keep coming back to the bamboo analogy — a good friend’s favourite — where for years the thing barely breaks the surface, and then one season it shoots up metres in weeks. The roots were the whole point.

Notice the days that don’t fit the pattern. My Thursday (30 July) was the most efficient day of that week by a mile — over 80% of it went straight into income-generating work, anchored by one uninterrupted 90-minute writing block.

My Sunday, on the other hand, was almost entirely eaten by trip-logistics planning for the next Latin America leg. Neither is “wrong” — but noticing the pattern is how you get better at protecting the days that actually make money.

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What July Actually Looked Like

Two very different chapters, really.

The first half was about disappearing. The second half was about paying attention to somewhere I thought I already knew.

 

Canada was pure road trip — no plan further ahead than “let’s see what’s in the next town.” 16 days with no laptop, no content calendar, no notifications from client Slack channels. Just driving, stopping when something looked worth stopping for, and letting the business run on autopilot for the first time in a long time.

Mexico City has been the opposite kind of good. I’ve been here before, briefly, on the kind of trip where you tick off the big sights and leave. This time I’m staying long enough to have a favourite market, a coffee order the barista remembers, a neighbourhood that’s started to feel less like a destination and more like a Tuesday.

Work-wise, roughly half my tracked hours here went straight into income-generating work — client strategy, SEO, content, brand outreach.

The rest split fairly evenly between admin (file systems, invoices, the unglamorous backend of running a business), trip logistics for the next leg, and the occasional meeting.

If there’s one thing I’d tighten up looking back at it: trip planning kept sneaking into work-designated hours instead of staying in its own lane. Something to fix in August.

READ ALSO:
The Loneliest Thing Nobody Tells You About Travelling the World
The Best Travel eSIM [2026 GUIDE]

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More Myths To Bust

Every income report brings the same handful of comments into my inbox. Let’s get ahead of them.

💬 "If you really loved your business, you wouldn't need to unplug from it."

I’d flip that entirely. I built this business specifically so I could unplug from it — 16 days, zero hours, and it kept earning. That’s not a lack of passion. That’s the actual goal.

💬 "Real digital nomads are grinding 24/7 from their laptop on a beach somewhere."

Some are, and it burns them out fast. My best months — this one included — happen because I’ve built streams that don’t need constant babysitting. A road trip with a closed laptop shouldn’t feel radical for someone running their own business, but it still does, which tells you how deep the always-on assumption runs.

💬 "Freelance and consulting income isn't as 'real' as passive blog income."

Tell that to my spreadsheet. SEO and PR consulting work was over half of July’s revenue — the single biggest line by a wide margin. Skills-for-hire income is still income, and honestly, it’s some of the most stable I’ve got, because it doesn’t depend on an algorithm.

💬 "You need to have it all figured out before you start your own thing."

I very much didn’t, and still don’t, if I’m honest. What I had was a habit of starting before I felt ready, and adjusting in public.

If you’re sitting on an idea waiting for the “ready” feeling to arrive, I’d gently say: it’s not coming. Start messier than you’d like.

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How I Built This Life — V2

The “here’s how I did it” section of income reports usually skips the boring middle. I’d rather not do that.

The Diversification Wasn’t Instant

5 income streams didn’t happen in one go.

Display ads came first — the slowest-building, scrappiest one.
Affiliate income followed as traffic grew.
Then brand partnerships, once I had an audience worth pitching to.
SEO and PR consulting — now my biggest line — only exists because clients started asking me to do for their sites what I’d already been doing for mine for years.

I Learned To Pitch, Properly

Sponsored posts and brand deals don’t fall into your inbox. I had to learn how to pitch — what to lead with, how to price it, how to follow up without being annoying. It’s a skill like any other, and once I actually systemised it, that income stream stopped being unpredictable.

Check out my No BS Pitch Formula if you want the exact framework I use to land brand deals!

I Kept Investing In The Skills That Actually Pay

SEO didn’t stay static while I built this business, and it’s not staying static now either — how people search, and how AI tools answer those searches, has shifted fast. The clients paying me for SEO and PR work today are paying for expertise I’ve had to keep updating, not something I learned once and coasted on.

If you want to get ahead of how AI search is changing visibility, 
this is exactly what my AEO guide covers.

I Hired Before I Felt Ready — And Got It Wrong A Few Times

Here’s the part that actually made this month possible, and I don’t think I’ve said it out loud on the blog before: none of July — the 0 hours in Canada, the 16 days genuinely offline — happens without my team.

They run the operational side of BATW, the planning and admin that used to eat my entire week. Then there’s content and outreach. When I disappear, they don’t just hold the fort. They keep things moving.

Getting to this point humbled me more than almost anything else in this business. I’ve hired the wrong fit before. I’ve under-briefed someone and then quietly resented them for not reading my mind. I’ve over-managed someone else because I hadn’t actually learned how to delegate yet, and then wondered why they never felt like they could own anything. Every one of those was on me, not them.

Leadership wasn’t a skill I walked into this with — I built it the same clumsy way I built everything else here: badly at first, in public, with people who deserved a better process than I gave them early on.

What’s different now is that hiring and onboarding get treated as seriously as client work. A real induction. Clear ownership. Regular check-ins that actually happen, not ones that quietly slide when things get busy.

Pro tip: if you’re building a team, budget time for getting leadership wrong before you get it right. Nobody talks about that part, and it cost me more than any single bad hire did.

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FAQ About Making Money While Travelling

What’s the one thing that’s changed your income the most this year?

Treating my SEO and content expertise as its own service, not just a skill I used for my own site. That single shift is why SEO/PR consulting became my biggest income stream this month. If you’re running a business or brand and want a hand with that side of things, here’s what working with me looks like.

How did you make money while spending over two weeks completely off-grid?

Mostly because I wasn’t relying on any single income source. Retainer work I’d already delivered kept billing on schedule, ad revenue and affiliate commissions kept ticking over passively, and nothing needed daily attention to keep functioning. That only works if you’ve built it that way before you disappear, not during.

Do you need to work every single day to keep a business like this running?

No — and July is the clearest proof I can offer. What you do need is enough diversification that no one stream depends entirely on you being online right now. That’s worth building toward even if your first few months don’t allow for a two-week break yet.

Is freelance or consulting income really “passive,” like people say blogging is?

Not at first — it’s genuinely active work. But it compounds differently to blog income: once you have a retainer relationship and a reputation, the sales cycle gets shorter and the work gets more predictable. It’s a different kind of stability, not a lesser one.

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READ ALSO:
How To Start A Professional-Looking Blog In No Time!
The Uncensored Truth Behind How I Afford To Travel So Much
Best Cities For Digital Nomads To Work In

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I wrote this one because July felt different to write about. Not because the number was bigger than May’s — though it was — but because half the month proved something I’ve been trying to build toward for years: that this business can run without me standing over it.

$18,810.20, roughly 66 hours worked, 16 of those days spent completely offline in Canada, and the rest spent falling for Mexico City all over again.

That’s what July actually looked like — slower in places, faster in others, and built on years of groundwork that didn’t feel like much at the time.

You don’t need to want this exact life. But if some version of stepping back from your business without it falling apart appeals to you — that’s not a fantasy, it’s a systems problem. And systems problems can be solved.

“The best time to start was 5 years ago. The second best time is today.”

Got questions about any of this — the income streams, the pitching, the SEO side, or just how the two weeks in Canada actually worked logistically? Drop me a DM on Instagram. I read every single one.

— Bel x