Life at Palmer Station has proven to be exceptionally busy but I did manage to find a bit of time today to put together a photo gallery. I fully intend on putting together some posts detailing my trip down, as it was fun and exciting…but for now, enjoy the photo galleries

As time goes on, my ideas for this site have changed and continue to change. As travel is a passion of mine and money is a necessity to travel, the theme of the site will stay the same – travel and remote/seasonal/contract work.

The site started as a misguided attempt at making money with websites. I haven’t done terribly, mind you, and the site is just three months old, so I certainly shouldn’t expect the world. The forum hasn’t done very well at all and will probably get ditched. Other things have done surprisingly well and will get more time dedicated to them. I built a few other sites at the same time as I built this one, all of them more blatant about their attempt to earn me an income, but, ultimately, what I’ve learned is that to make remote income, I should be building websites for other people. It’s work that I thoroughly enjoy and on sites like elance doing this type of work can prove quite lucrative.

I have been toying around a bit with php scripting, and in doing so have come up with this: a database of overseas contractors and seasonal employersIt’s not pretty, and I still have a pretty big ‘to do’ list of improvements but it is functional and I’m pretty proud that I put it together by myself, learning some valuable skills in the process.

Also, while perusing the forums at boots ‘n’ all someone gave me a good idea – it’s one of those quizzes that will help people narrow down where they want to go in different countries. I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to build a script that would help someone create a budget based on where they are traveling to. I may very well try to develop this also. Hrmm…might be a good idea for a WordPress plugin as well.

I’ve also been messing around with some of the wonderful features at google apps. I re-acquired a free vanity domain that I had several years ago and set up an email address to go with it via google apps. There are also some pretty slick features for domain name maintenance there. That doesn’t have a lot to do with future upgrades, at least not in a direct sense, but the tools will help in the development of this site.

So…I was browsing the Working Nomad Forum today and I noticed some of the names of the posters and mods over there…and that really closed the circle for me. Most of the readers here…or at least the few of you who are kind enough to leave comments – well, we all belong to the same circle of bloggers/webmasters who aspire to make money online, or we view travel as a lifestyle…all of the comments left here have been valuable and appreciated – but I suspect, that you’re like me and have read about building backlinks so we find sites related to our own and comment in the hope of building backlinks.

While I appreciate the readership, I also know that I really jumped into this way too fast…without doing any real research. I guess I thought I was going take the world by storm and create some kind of buzz with a catchy phrase and new ideas. The site was live for about two days when I discovered that was probably not going to happen – nobody is googling phrases they have never heard of – well, actually I have seen a couple of hits here now for “nomadic revolution” but they were probably disappointed I wonder what they might have been looking for? If you landed here because of that phrase, would you let me know what it is you were looking for?. I have built another couple of sites since then, putting into practice what I had read – and I’m seeing positive results. Those sites are all varying degrees more static than this one. A couple are being built as purely speculative things, one I built specifically for a keyword that I discovered by accident – the subject matter is really quite sickening to me, but 4400 searches per day for 290,000 pages and #1 isn’t SEO optimized for the keyword at all.

Anyhow, during this site’s short existence it has gone through some dramatic changes. There are only a few ads and I doubt I’ll put any more on in fact, I’ll probably take all or ‘em off the front page – unless a lot more search engine traffic starts showing up – I mean, my fellow bloggers/webmasters aren’t here to buy anything you’re here to hopefully get entertained and get some links by commenting.

Cool! in honor of you guys, I have installed the wordpress plugin that removes the no-follow attribute from links in comments. It’s set up with very loose filtering right now and will remain that way until it starts seeing abuse.

On another backlinking note, I just signed up at Qassia. If you don’t know what it is, it looks like it wants to be like hubpages by using other peoples’ content to draw traffic. They get content, you get linkjuice and the harder you work for them, the higher they rate your pages, causing your links to be that much stronger. If you want to sign up too, go to my profile page, sign up and verify your email. I’ll get some bonus page ranking currency, you’ll get a great new way to build backlinks. Yep, I’m a shill for the man.

In 2007 I flew to Geneva Switzerland on my way to ski in Chamonix. One of the most economical and efficient ways to get to Chamonix from Geneva is by bus, so by bus I would go.

I boarded the bus at the Geneva airport and set off towards the world world-renowned French Alpine resort. I was the only American on the bus which happened to have many other non-Europeans on board. There were Canadians, Japanese and many other nationalities represented on the bus. Guess which nationality was pulled off the bus at the border to have their bags completely hand-searched and to be patted down – treated like a criminal because of their nationality? If you guessed the American, you are correct. I don’t blame these border guards. Surely they’re simply following some unwritten protocol. In fairness, have you ever stopped to notice how foreigners are treated when they enter the United States? It’s bad enough being an American returning to the U.S. via LAX…I do that at least once per year and dread it more and more each time…but foreigners…they’re treated like dirtbags, or at least this has been my observation.

Now, under the auspices of creating more effective security in a September 12th world, the Department of Homeland Security (and presumably, the Dept. of State) will be requiring European visitors to the U.S . to provide personal information electronically prior to their departure from home.

From a Reuters Article

“The EU’s presidency agrees with new U.S. rules that will oblige Europeans flying to the United States to give personal data over the internet in advance, its minister said on Thursday.

But the minister, Dragutin Mate of Slovenia, said that some European Union states had misgivings about giving information on health. The bloc’s executive Commission said it was waiting for more clarification from Washington.”

At issue specifically is the requirement to provide detailed medical information which, in my mind and the mind of many others, should be a private matter.

At any rate, as it sounds as if Europeans will be subject to more bureaucracy when they visit the U.S. you can bet that EU members will be reciprocating.

Over at Nomadic Matt’s Travel Blog There is a great three part series on Teaching English Overseas.

Myself, never having any experience in this (or interest for that matter), teaching English overseas has remained a bit of an enigma to me, but it is a viable way to earn an income while traveling and living the life of a nomad. I was always under the impression that a college degree was a requirement for this type of work but as Matt points out in his how-to guide, that may not be necessarily true. Anyhow, it can never hurt to have one more skill to add to your repertoire – so go check his article and get up-to-speed on how to teach English and earn Income while traveling.