A little over three years ago, my wife and I sold out of our bricks and mortar business and cast around for a new source of income. Our requirements were simple – we wanted a business just the two of us could run from anywhere in the world, and we wanted to create a stable and secure income for ourselves that didn’t fluctuate wildly in the way our previous businesses had.

We live on a small tourist island in The Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Africa, and we decided to start a blog called Lanzarote Information, with the aim of growing it to provide the best information about the island for tourists and residents.

It was incredibly hard work initially, working long hours with little or no income, but after a year the site was generating one full time income, and after eighteen months enough to support us both quite well. We’ve recently had our third birthday and we have a fabulous business that generates a significant income, and which I imagine is a valuable asset for us.

Why do I think it’s the perfect business?

The income is spread across multiple sources

We don’t rely heavily on one source for our income. Our money comes from direct advertisers, affiliate promotions, Adsense advertising, a membership program and the sale of our own books. And within each category, there are multiple sources as well – for example we have 42 direct advertisers, and we sell products as affiliates for 17 companies.

All this means that if any one source finished tomorrow, for whatever reason, it isn’t business critical to us. That’s extremely comforting, and almost recession proof.

Most of the income is passive

It simply happens automatically. Advertisers and members pay each month (some annually), affiliate sales are automatic, and our own product sales are generated mainly by our email auto-responder series.

Our only real commitment now is to create content each day, and that’s something we enjoy doing. But I know that even if we had to take some months off, perhaps through illness, the income would continue, and only start to decline over several months.

We are truly mobile

We travel between UK, mainland Spain and the island pretty much whenever we want. We can work with our laptops wherever we want. And even when we’re on the island, we spend plenty of time on Wifi in cafés because it means we meet other people and get plenty of news and things to write about.

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