Keeping our trip alive financially has been a roller-coaster – we can certainly qualify as poster children for the saying “believe it and it will happen”.
What We Did
Our original intent was to write travel articles for publication. That was superseded by a contract we landed to help develop a real estate website, but only two months into our trip the website group lost its funding. We turned to a small amount of rental income we had, which disappeared several months later when the real estate crash hit south Florida.
Throughout the subsequent five years we’ve done a wide variety of odd jobs; we’ve set up an affiliate income program on our site; we created an Amazon store on our site; we had a small amount of income for a few months from my youngest son renting rooms in our house; and we’ve lived as frugally as anyone can imagine.
Throughout all of it we’ve had cash donations and product donations trickle in, often just when we really needed it. The kindness and generosity of total strangers has been astounding to us, and made continuing the trip possible, especially during our really tough times.
We’ve been offered water, food, transportation, and places to stay, again and again and again. We’ve even been treated to meals out, movies in theaters, festival admissions, and groceries. The number of truly wonderful people in this world is just astonishing.
What We Accomplished
As of this writing we have finished a lengthy break from being on the road. We spent our break very successfully downsizing from a three-bedroom/three-bath home with a pool and large yard to fifty square feet in a storage unit.
Our goal from the beginning has been to support ourselves through writing. For a great many rather compelling reasons, it’s taken us longer to put our plan into play than we originally figured.
But we are nothing if not persistent.
We have continued to make steady progress along the way. Our website has been completely restructured from the ground up and is in good shape inside and out. We have hundreds of blogs and thousands of photos on the site, all well organized.
We now have an active shopping cart. We successfully worked our way through publishing a set of three e-books. As of this writing, we have successfully done a small initial sales trial.
Meanwhile, Rosemary’s head has been full of several books for a few years now, so she’s spending the next few months writing those books. When those are done there’s a list of trip-related articles and short books she’s got planned. Chelsea has plans for a set of children’s books.
There’s still a bit of a “yikes-can-we-really-do-this” feeling, but we have faith and determination in equal measure.
Meanwhile we prefer to look at the past few years as our “starving artists in Paris” phase, knowing we’ll be celebrating one of these days, and feeling far richer for the experiences we’ve had.
Yes, We Love Help
We are often asked if we need help, and yes, sure, absolutely we love help. We have lots of options for ways you can help, but feel free to be as creative as you like.
There’s always the very straightforward cash donation (there’s no amount too big or too small), and buying our books, but you can also become a sponsor, use our Amazon store, buy from our affiliates by clicking through our site, or you can advertise by putting an ad on our site.
If you’re interested, just click on one of the links below.
Make a Donation
Buy Our Books
Become A Sponsor
Movie Letter
Use Our Amazon Store
Use Our Affiliates
Advertise On Our Site
Find Us A Place To Stay
Current Supporters
Make a Donation
We’ve had people ask if they can help us by giving cash, so we put a “donate” button on our site. It’s a PayPal link, so they take their fees out first, but we do receive the cash in our PayPal account immediately. It’s simple, easy, and straightforward.
Buy Our Books
We’d love to have you buy our “Life’s Adventures Lived” e-books. We had fun living the adventures, and we still go back and read our journals regularly. Join our adventures by buying the books.
Become A Sponsor
We are looking for a few people or companies who have products that are a good fit with us. We’re interested in developing a mutually supportive and profitable relationship. We’d love to hear from you at ontheroad@travelingroses.com.
Movie Letter/ Fundraising
In late autumn of 2007 we wrote a letter telling our story, liberally lacing it with movie quotes. Our idea was to ask for a $30 minimum donation and to give away a t-shirt to each person who could identify all the movie quotes hidden in the letter. When we realized how time and cost intensive it would be, we scratched the t-shirt idea, but we really liked the movie letter.
We had so much fun with it that we decided to keep the letter on our site. Let us know if you can identify any of the movie quotes! Click here to read the full letter.
Use Our Amazon Store
We would love to have you use our Amazon Store. Every time you purchase something from Amazon, using our online store, or by clicking through our store, we get a small commission, which helps support our journey, at no cost to you. We’d love to have you tell your family and friends to go through the Amazon link on our site as well, because every little bit helps.
Use Our Affiliates
Like with our Amazon store, every time you purchase something from one of our affiliates by clicking on the link from our site, we get a small commission. And again, each purchase helps support our journey, at no cost to you. Little bits and pieces all add up, so tell your family and friends to use it too.
We are choosing only affiliates who have products that we ourselves use. So if you are interested in any of the products we talk about, or want to buy something from any of the websites, we’d love to have you click on the links on our site.
Advertise On Our Site
We are looking for companies or individuals who would be interested in advertising on our site. If you have products that would be interesting to our readers, and you would like to talk about putting an ad on our site, please let us know.
We can be reached by email at advertise@travelingroses.com.
Find Us A Place To Stay
If you can offer us a place to stay along our route, please let us know. It saves a great deal on our daily budget.
We are trying to keep our route updated, and we will have a list of towns we’ll be heading through on our Route Schedule when we start moving again, so check it out and see if you know of anyone in the area who may take us in for a night or two. You can contact us at ontheroad@travelingroses.com
Current Supporters
We’ve been amazed at the support we’ve received so far, both big and little. Check out our current supporters page to see a list of our gifts and supporters.