How I earn a full-time income while living in Sri Lanka

I traded a UK 9-to-5 for tuk-tuks and monsoon mornings. Here's the honest breakdown of how the money actually works.

I get this question every single day, so here's the full story — no fluff, no 'passive income in 30 days' nonsense.\n\n## The starting point\nI quit my marketing job in early 2024 with roughly six months of runway saved. That runway is the single most important thing nobody talks about. It buys you the calm to make good decisions instead of desperate ones.\n\n## What actually pays the bills\nRight now the income is split across three buckets: paid brand collaborations (about 55%), UGC and photo licensing (about 25%), and a small but steady stream from a Notion travel-planning template I sell (about 20%). None of them existed a year ago.\n\n## What Sri Lanka has to do with it\nMy monthly cost of living here is roughly a third of what it was in London. That gap is what let me say no to bad collabs in the first six months, which is what let me say yes to good ones later.\n\nIf you're thinking about doing something similar — start with the runway. Everything else follows.