What goes on behind the scenes? And a beautiful day in the city of Korca, Albania!

We spent the morning getting caught up on some internet work. Yes, I'm sure it looks like all we do is have fun and explore every day. And we do try to do that. But there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that is more like work than play! It's the fact that we can do it from anywhere in the world with a good internet connection that makes our lifestyle so enjoyable to us.

We have heard some comment that we are "lucky" to be doing what we're doing, but everything we're doing has been planned, and is the result of a conscious decision on our part.

So, what kind of internet work did we do yesterday?

The day starts off writing this blog. How long it takes depends on what we did the previous day and how many photos we took. The photos need to be sorted through and sometimes adjusted. Never "photoshopped", but just straightening and/or cropping and maybe refining the colors a bit. Then writing and uploading photos and the occasional video. I would say all of this takes between an hour and a half and three hours. We make about $20 CAD ($16.50 USD) per day from the advertising on the blog, so it's not like it's a high paying job! But we still enjoy doing it, so we continue despite the amount of work involved.

After the blog post is published, I go to our MeWe page and post the blog link to our followers there. We now have 328 members on MeWe! I know, it's nothing compared to the 5,300 that we had on facebook, but I'm so glad we switched. MeWe is a much cleaner format than FB, and there is no advertising at all.

I seem to have a constant list of things I have to do online. One of the couples from last year's RV Caravan to Mexico had remained in Mexico when Covid hit last March, and they have finally decided to make their way back to the U.S., so I was quite happy to help them with a detailed route guide. That took a couple of hours for me to put together.

What kind of other things are on my list? Well, I have to write a sponsored post for an RV Cover company. Normally, the content is supplied, but this one they asked me to write for extra payment. Normally, we charge $125 USD to publish a sponsored post, and an extra $50 if we have to write it. If the sponsored post is related to casino/gambling/dating/cannabis then we charge $300 USD.

I also have to make some changes with the blog regarding how people are notified of posts. Google's Feedburner is going to stop in June, and so many readers will stop getting notifications. I have to sort that out. I have to make some changes to our account information for how we get paid through Amazon. Again, some of the payment banking info has changed, and I have to contact Amazon to make the changes there. Also, we were approved to be a Heymondo affiliate so that we can get a 5% discount on our travel medical insurance and we can also offer the same 5% to our readers. I have to get that set up. 

Then, I receive about 50 emails per day from various Amazon suppliers who send me coupon codes for our Facebook Amazon Deals group. We operate a similar group on Mewe. I sort through those deals to find the best ones and post them to the group. This takes anywhere between 1-3 hours per day.

Then, we also do research about our travels. Where we are going next, what we are doing in the area, searching for new accommodation. Ruth also looks after labelling and filing all of our pictures, communicating with our readers, and keeping us well fed!

And then when all of this is done, we actually go out and do the things we really enjoy! 

After lunch, we went and wandered around downtown Korca. It's an easily walkable city of about 75,000 people. We are staying right in the downtown area. The catedral is only two blocks away...

Korca Cathedral.

Interior.

The cathedral was completed in 1995.

The previous cathedral had been destroyed by the Communist government in 1968.

We walked down a pedestrian street and came to this 10 story tower.

Across for the tower was the tourist office. We went in and spoke to the girl who gave us some hiking tips in the area, and also told us we could go up the tower for a view for 50 lek ($0.60 CAD, $0.50 USD) per person. Sounds like a good deal to us!

They have an elevator, but we decided we needed the exercise so asked to take the stairs. Ten flights of stairs and we were hardly out of breath! Felt pretty good about that.

Views of Korca.

What a beautiful day!

We went down the stairs and found the door locked! But, I did say we needed some exercise. Back up the ten stories of stairs again, and we took the elevator down.

This old plaza would be busy in the evenings. 

We will return at that time one of these days.

Interesting.

City park.

You'll notice there aren't many people around. We were out in the afternoon when things tend to be a lot quieter in Albania. As I've said before, we find the locals tend to be more out and about mornings and evenings.

Not sure what's on the go for us today, but first I've got some more work to do!

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