We truly believe in transparency for establishing the trust for a mission like this. So we plan to make all the information around what we earn and how we spend public. It will be a while before our organization becomes even a reasonably sized one (for any third party company to verify how the money is spent), so until them all we have is good old Google Drive.
Having a good plan is the vital part for success especially for a long-term initiative like this. So not only want to put the plan together early but also keep it public via this post. There might be few changes as we work towards this but as of 2022, this plan is what we have in mind.
The approach we want to take here is something like what Squirrels do. Always keep some nuts/money for rainy days. Basically once we start generating some income, we plan on keeping some 3-6 months of what is required for sponsoring a child as a fund before hurrying up to sponsoring on day 1. Since the ad revenue is not a steady stream of income like job salary, we want to take safer path here.
With that said, here are details around our potential income and expenses.
Potential Streams of Income:
As of 2022, here is what we think are the potential streams of income for this mission. As it stands, nothing started to materialize over the income since we are in very early stages of this mission.
Google Adsense: YouTube and Ads on this website.
Commission Junction: Affiliate links you find on this site and YouTube channel.
Amazon: Affiliate from Amazon US
Potentially Donate Button: Future plan.
Potential Expenses:
We don't plan on spending any money over advertising or anything related to it and the hope is with the word of mouth and volunteers, this mission would take the traction needed. There are general costs associated with maintaining a site and creating content so here is how we plan to cover them.
Website Hosting: Thanks to our credit cards, we will use our points from there to cover this.
Camera and Other Gear: Same as above.
Travel: Both myself (in IT) and my wife (in Insurance) have jobs in US and not planning on leaving our jobs any time soon. So anything related to travel expenses are our own vacations.
Content Creation: Everything will be volunteering based and not planning on hiring anyone.
Where to Track:
As stated early in this article, everything will be in Google Drive to begin with. We plan to maintain a spreadsheet to capture the spend and income to as much detailed as possible.
Statements and Other Docs: Drive Folder
Expenses Sheet: Spreadsheet
That's all from me. Peace !!