I am seeing more and more that people are quitting their jobs and opting to travel the world full time. That’s a pretty neat goal to work towards right?

But whilst you’re on the go, it would be handy if you could make some extra money to fund your travel.

Even it’s a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, there are many, many ways that you can make an income online to become a location independent entrepreneur or as I like to call it, a digital nomad.

Who Are Digital Nomads?

Digital nomads are people who use technology to earn a living whilst travelling the world from country to country.

I have seen this phrase crop up many times and I suppose that’s the inspiration behind this post. I am writing for that person who wants to have that laptop lifestyle and location freedom.

This means that regardless of where you are, you should be able to earn an income and make a living effortlessly. This post is here to give you some ideas and inspire you to take action.

If however you want more of an in-depth “how to” set up your own business and take it further, then I’m your girl. Just send me a message here and I can help you get started, of course only if you’re serious.

When it comes to living the laptop lifestyle I like to think that I’m a jack of all trades, but unfortunately I’m only a master of some. So if for whatever reason I can’t help you, then I can definitely point you in the right direction.

I got connections yo! Lol.

Awesome, are you ready to learn some new ways of having a nomadic lifestyle?

Here Are 10 Ways To Achieve The Digital Nomad Lifestyle

1. Become A Social Media Manager

Almost every business has a social media account.

Whether that is with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest.

However they do not have specialised members in their team to manage these accounts. That’s where social media managers come in.

The way that most social media accounts are set up, also makes it easy for an individual or company to take over someone else’s account.

It then becomes simple to deal with tasks like uploading relevant and engaging content, answering follower’s questions, engaging with followers, responding to messages, advertising to grow their brand and attract more followers.

|Getting paid as a social media manager

As a social media manager you can create a retainer with a set rate or you can ask for payment on an hourly basis.

If you are managing the advertisements of the account you can ask for a percentage of the revenue or income that the company makes as a result of your effort. This will then give you the opportunity to engineer your income as you can then scale advertisements to make it more profitable for you and the company.

Social media managers can charge between $50 to $500 just for consulting. You can also arrange to do a complete social media strategy or agree to set up a business’ social media account.

|How to find work as a social media manger

Start by setting up your very own website. This will help you stand out from the crowd. On your website include some information about you, if you have testimonials add them in there and make sure to add a contact page.

Aim for professionalism. Get a professional email from Namecheap or Godaddy.

Create your social media pages and ensure that your branding is consistent. So if your website is www.johnsocial.com all your social media accounts should have that same name.

Start a blog and show off your expertise by creating fresh content regularly. If you know very little on how to create your own website or blog then read my article The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Successful Blog Or Website where you can get started with Bluehost and WordPress for only $3.95 a month.

Invest in paid advertising. With ads you can obtain targeted traffic really fast.

For ads I love Google Ads, Bing Ads and Facebook Ads.

If you do not know how to use them then try out the following courses that will help you master each of these avenues:

• Google Ads Pay-Per-Click 101: Intro to Google & Facebook Advertising
• Bing Ads Forget Google; Bing Pay-Per-Click Advertising Traffic Course
• Facebook Ads Facebook Social Traffic Blueprint Facebook Ads Course

When running ads, direct the person to a capture page so you can start building your email list. I love using Clickfunnels for my capture page builder. They offer a 14 day trial so you can always test them out to see if you love it just as much as I do.

When you drive visitors to a capture page some of them will not immediately turn into customers. So it is important that you have a solid email followup strategy.

Use email marketing software like GetResponse or Aweber for your follow ups. Of course your email strategy will include converting subscribers into customers, building relationships with your subscribers and nurturing them.

|Other ways to find work which may not be as effective but can still work include:

• Freelance job listing sites. Sign up to Upwork or Freelancer.com and post a listing for your service.
• Cold calling. This is a painful task but it works. Just be aware that it may be hard to convince businesses to hire you because it may not appear to be a professional way to provide your service.
• Word of mouth. Speak to as many people as you can and ask them to share the word.
• Cold emailing. This is just like cold calling and may not produce the best results. One advice, do not send a mass email to a list of companies that you are interested in working with. This looks so tacky and sleazy. Rather send a personalised email to each business and add a little compliment in there to break the ice.

2. Start A YouTube Channel

Travel vlogs are so popular on YouTube.

You can document your travel lifestyle and create a brand around it. Or you can create content that educates your audience or is purely for entertainment purposes.

A great example of a travel lifestyle vlogger is Alex Chacon on his YouTube Channel Alex Chacon. Prior to YouTube Alex told me that he was on his way to medical school having just finished his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Texas. When he decided to start YouTube he took a break from his studies, sold everything and jumped on his “motorcycle to travel the world. That trip took me from Alaska to Argentina in 500 days….I haven’t looked back since.” 

You can see how Alex lives his digital nomad lifestyle by checking out his channel here.

Starting a YouTube channel is easy but the hard work comes in by attracting followers.

Of course you want your content to be engaging. It can be an entertainment based channel where you provide content that is amusing or an education based channel where you teach people how to do something or provide reviews on products.

|If you do decide to create a YouTube channel and invest your time in growing your fan base there are two ways that you can monetise it.

Google Adsense

Most YouTubers make sufficient income solely from the Google Adsense program. However to create a sustainable income from this source, aim to have in the range of 100k and more subscribers.

Affiliate Marketing

This is the best and most lucrative way to monetise your YouTube channel. If this is the first time you are stumbling upon this term then read my article How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners.

There are so many affiliate products, programs and networks that you can join in whatever niche you decide to start to make a full time income. In my article 6 Profitable Niches For Affiliate Marketers and Bloggers, I outline a huge list of affiliate programs for different niches.

I am sure you will be able to join a few programs from there and get started earning an income on YouTube with affiliate marketing.

If you have a blog and want more traffic to your blog then you can also use YouTube as a traffic source.

Ahhhhhh the power of video is so amazing. It helps you to connect with your audience and people see that you are a real person who they can resonate with. It’s also a great platform to grow your brand and build relationships with people.

3. Start an Ecommerce Business

Ok so you might be thinking that eCommerce should be the furthest thing from a digital nomad’s mind right?

Well actually eCommerce done the right way is perfect for any traveller who wants to earn a sustainable income fast.

Here’s the secret.

|Dropshipping

Dropshipping is the process of selling products online without having an inventory and without having to do your own shipping.

So just who does that? Well the dropshipper of course? You do you think?

You can enter into an agreement with a supplier or wholesaler who will provide you with products to place in your store. However when there is a sale they will package and ship the products on your behalf.

You can also arrange to have your products sorted, packaged and shipped by fulfilment centres. Simply arrange with the supplier or wholesaler to provide bulk product orders to your preferred fulfilment centre.

|How to start an eCommerce business?

To start your own dropshipping eCommerce business, is very easy. Companies like Shopify and Woocommerce provide eCommerce platforms that make it simple to build online stores within minutes. 

If you would like to build your own eCommerce store then follow my step by step guide How To Start An Online Store. 

|Where to find products?

Finding products for your eCommerce store is also a breeze. You can simply use Google to find relevant wholesalers and dropshippers or if you just cannot be bothered to do the work I have done it for you. Get my HUGE list of dropshippers and wholesalers sent to your email by clicking here.

|Two ways to start a profitable and successful eCommerce business

Do it alone. You can spend hours learning everything there is about building online stores, adding products to your store, finding products that convert and selling products online. You can end up investing your money in the wrong tools and resources, get overwhelmed real fast and start to doubt if making money with an online store is for you.

Take a proven shortcut that pinpoints the exact strategies you need to focus on to grow a profitable eCommerce business. I always value courses because it helps you to save a lot of time and gives you the right information you need to get the fastest results.

This is exactly how I was able to grow my own online store to $7.5k in just one month. You can read my story here. 

And this is why I would recommend the Ecom Entrepreneur web class suite by Vick Strizheus and Shubham Singh. This is a step by step video series that teaches you how to set up your online store, how to do product research, how to create a high converting store, how to promote your store amongst other lessons.

These guys are absolutely ace. Before this course came out I was tutored by Vick Strizheus himself with my own store. So I know you are getting an absolute bonus.

To join the Ecom Entrepreneur web class suite click here where you will be taken to a free video training on eCommerce and then head on to the eCommerce tutorials.

4. Sell Your Services On Upwork

Upwork is a place where you can advertise your freelance services.

There are tons of businesses that are looking for both amateur and professional freelancers and you can do your work remotely.

In most cases you would be required to exchange time for money. Therefore if you want more of a freedom lifestyle as a digital nomad then this may not be the best option for you.

If you don’t mind spending a few hours out of your day to provide your service then keep reading on.

With Upwork you can advertise literally any professional service. So if you can do clerical work, graphic design, custom creations, web development or social media management then this is where you would go.

The best thing about Upwork is that you make the rules. You can provide your own hourly rates or if you prefer a fixed fee then you can state your own terms and conditions for being hired.

|Fiverr

Another freelance platform is Fiverr. Anyone can get started with any freelance service by charging $5.00 for their work. Of course you can charge whatever rate you want but Fiverr is where most businesses go to for the smaller jobs.

Don’t be put off by this however. I say make the platform work for you if you have a skill or service you want to promote.

Both Upwork and Fiverr also showcase the best freelancers using testimonials and ratings. This is how businesses choose who they want to work with.

As with anything else you must build up your profile. The best tip I can give you to get your foot in the door, is to provide your service for a lower rate, get a few stellar reviews, then increase your rates to what you would normally charge.

When I started my online business there were many things that I outsourced such as design and web development. I think it is an absolutely essential service that they are providing.

5. Start A Blog

Oh blogging! This is my baby.

Go figure right when I have my own blog.

It is the most comprehensive way to make an income from anywhere in the world however it is the most intensive! Labour intensive I mean. Haha! just kidding.

But seriously, starting a blog requires a lot of time to create and add content. But when you have enough content to keep your readers engaged, it can be a profitable and passive way for you to make money.

So you get more time to actually sip a Pina Colada and lay on the beach.

But don’t just create a blog for creating a blog’s sake. When you do that, that’s just a hobby.

You want to blog and treat it like a business. This therefore requires putting out content regularly, building a loyal following, providing value and monetising it.

Of course you need to monetise it right?! How do you expect to make money?

|You can monetise a blog in so many ways:

• Affiliate marketing
• Offering your own services
• Ecommerce
• Online courses

The opportunities to make money from a blog are endless.

If you are interested in starting a blog with affiliate marketing, which by the way is the easiest way to get started for beginners, then my article on 6 Profitable Niches For Affiliate Marketers and Bloggers is a great read. You will learn which is the best niche to invest your time in and which makes the most money easily.

You can also take a look at How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners.

|What you need to start a blog

A Blog of course. In my article The Ultimate Guide To Starting A Successful Blog I take you through how to start your own blog using WordPress and Bluehost for only $3.95 per month.

Affiliate products. You can start a blog on any subject in the world and there are so many affiliate products you can use to promote on your blog. Take a look at the programs I recommend in various niches in this article here.

A capture page to turn your visitors into subscribers. It is so important that when you are starting an online business, that you build an email list from the beginning. Your email list will be your loyal tribe who will trust your suggestions and buy anything you recommend. For capture pages, I have come to love Clickfunnels. LeadPages, GetResponse and Aweber also provide the ability to create capture pages but they are not as snazzy as Clickfunnels.

You can read my review of each product in this article here.

Email marketing. To connect with your subscribers you need to email them regularly so it is important that you have an email autoresponder doing the work for you. Aweber is my go to email marketing software but GetResponse also provide a great service and offer you 30 day trials so you can test them out and see which one works for you.

Image and graphics from Shutterstock. Do not use images from Google if you do not want to get into legal trouble with copyright.

Design software. I use Picmonkey to create the beautiful images you see on this blog. Come on. Make your blog look appealing and attractive. 😁

6. Remote Jobs

Most people are unhappy with their jobs and more and more companies are realising this. Chances are that the career you are pursuing or the company that you are working for, offers remote work where you can choose to work from home or from anywhere in the world.

If you have a job already you may be able to take it on the road.

Don’t assume that your job does not allow remote working. If you don’t ask, you will never receive.

This is why I would recommend that you try and negotiate an agreement with your employer about being able to work remotely.

Forbes.com recently released an article on the Top 100 Companies that Offer Remote Jobs. Take a read and see whether your company is on the list. That will be a good start for you.

If you do not yet have a job then there are sites that you can look to, to find remote work:

FlexJobs is a resource that helps you find the best flexible jobs, work from home jobs and remote jobs. All the jobs on FlexJobs are legitimate jobs which have been hand picked and screened by their research team so you can be sure that you are joining a reliable service with you in mind.

To apply for jobs with FlexJobs simply head on over to their website, sign up by submitting a few of your personal information and then take a look at their jobs board for the most relevant jobs that interest you. To sign up for FlexJobs click here.

Remote.co provides a list of the most exhaustive remote jobs that you can do. They have jobs in all different skill sets to include marketing jobs, transcription jobs, customer service jobs. To start looking for jobs on Remote.co you do need to sign up and provide a few details. Once in you can search their jobs board for relevant remote jobs. To sign up for Remote.co click here.        

7. Brand Ambassador

If you already have a massive following on social media accounts or you’re great at building an online presence fast and networking, then becoming a brand ambassador for companies might be a good idea for you.

|Who are brand ambassadors?

Brand ambassadors are people who promote a company’s products or services and represent the company’s image in a positive way.

So if you have over a million subscribers on YouTube, you will most likely be sought after because of the influence you have over your audience by just doing a review of a product or service.

Travel vlogs tend to get very popular quickly so it can help you to document your nomadic lifestyle and talk about the different places you are visiting. Make it fun and entertaining. Then you can promote certain hotels or international B&Bs and get paid to do so.

|How do you become a brand ambassador?

Sometimes depending on the size of your following, companies will reach out to you making the process simple.

To help with this make sure that you have a sponsorship or advertising page set up if you have a website. Explain the type of sponsorships and brands you are looking to secure, a list of your marketing stats and other companies you have worked with (if any).

If you are not yet established this is where you will have to roll up your sleeves and ask for sponsorship.

Join brand networks. Here are a few:

• Socialix
• Massive Sway
• Sponsored Tweets
• Socialstars
• Collectively Inc

With brand networks you are required to create a profile, include stats about your social media networks and a price you are willing to accept.

Find a few companies that you are interested in working with and contact them. Make the proposal remembering the WIIFM method. Companies will work with you when you can show them that you can drive sales to their business. So ensure that you have a great marketing plan

8. Sell your own Apparel

This is another avenue you can explore with Ecommerce.

Thankfully you can also do this remotely with the right company that ships the finished product for you so you do not have to worry about that.

When I started my eCommerce business early this year, this was one of the avenues I explored to sell custom design t-shirts, sweaters or vests.

I used a T-shirt print on demand company called CustomCat. You will upload your own design to their systems remotely and when you have a sale, the order is sent directly to CustomCat who take care of the fulfilment for you.

They also handled any returns on my behalf.

Other companies that have the same model are:

• Teespring
• PillowProfit
• Printful
• Teemill

If you do not want to worry about marketing the product then you can try Merch By Amazon. They are a print on demand service by Amazon for selling t-shirts. All you have to do is upload your t-shirt design and Amazon takes care of the selling process for you.

One thing about Merch By Amazon is that it does take some time to get approval into the program. It took me just about three months or so to get approved so I would recommend that you apply as early as possible and wait it out.

In the mean time you can still sell your own apparel with the other print on demand companies I mentioned above but use Shopify or Woocommerce as your eCommerce platform.

9. Freelance Writing

If you never struggle to write content you can take advantage of that and get paid to write.

Heck you can even make a business out of it, instead of a side hustle.

Writing projects can be in any niche that you can think of. There are so many places that you can look to, to find the best writing jobs in markets that you love:

• Upwork sign up for Upwork and upload your profile. Then look for gigs that suit your criteria.
• Contentgather they are a content writing service that connects writers with businesses who need content for their websites. Content include blog posts, product descriptions, product reviews, how tos, tutorials and lots more.
• Freelancewriting.com make money here by writing content. They also have a jobs board where you can source many freelance writing jobs
• FlexJobs is another great platform to find remote flexible writing gigs
• Problogger is a jobs board where you can find long term freelance writing work
• Contena Pro this is a paid service and there are advantages to relying on a paid jobs service. Contena Pro makes it way easier to find suitable jobs for you faster. You can also avoid all the competition there is to find the best writing jobs, thereby saving a lot of time and maximising your productivity.

10. Affiliate Marketing

You can do affiliate marketing with a blog which is the long winded approach or you can do affiliate marketing by direct linking and using ads to help you find your target audience.

There are many companies that have affiliate programs that you can join and promote specifically for the benefit of earning an income from it.

|Which program should you join?

If you are using this method I would recommend finding a program that you have used and can recommend or already have results in.

For example, you can join a weight loss affiliate program because you have lost weight from the product. It will therefore be easy for you to recommend the product because of your results.

You can join a branded affiliate program because you love the brand and so it is natural for you to recommend it.

|Affiliate Marketing With The Four Percent Group

One company that has allowed me to find my footing in the online business world is the Four Percent Group.

They are an internet marketing web class that has taught me everything that I know about making an income online and growing a successful business online.

It was because of them that I learnt how to use systems and tools to automate my network marketing business and get more prospects and sales without even speaking to a single person. You can read more about my network marketing story here.

It is because of them, that I credit my success.

The Four Percent Group webclass offers step by step video training to help you master internet marketing. So a beginner who has absolutely no experience with affiliate marketing can use it to master selling any type of product online.

They also have an affiliate program and pay you a percentage of the sale for referring customers to them.

What I also like about this program is that it allows you to earn from up to 9 different income sources automatically.

How this works, is that the Four Percent Group introduces you to essential tools that you need for any business. This includes lead capture pages, websites, email marketing software.

As they are essential, they encourage you to become an affiliate for those tools so when you refer anyone to the web class and they learn how to set up a business properly, the affiliate commission will go directly to you as the referrer.

It is all so effortless as you only need to promote one product and the other income streams are unlocked automatically when users set up their marketing eco system.

If you would like to learn more about affiliate marketing and get paid at the same time then you may join the Four Percent Group here.

You can also source other affiliate programs like the Four Percent Group from networks like Clickbank, JVZoo or CJ Affiliate by Conversant formerly Commission Junction.

Awesome! You made it to the end

The ideas that I gave you above will require a lot of dedication to learn this new skillset that you are about to take on.

My advice. Don’t try and learn everything in a few days and give up when things don’t go right. I started this blog last year August but only got serious about it one month ago and have learnt so much.

It also took me about 8 months to understand the concept of internet marketing. Now I would say I am an expert in the field but I am still learning everyday.

This is why it is so important that to achieve success, you adopt one idea and make a commitment to be persistent and consistent.

The ideas I have outlined here is actually a reality for many digital entrepreneurs and it can be yours too if travelling full time is a goal you are working towards.

I really hope that this resource provides you with enough valuable information to quit your job if you want to become a digital nomad. Or if you are travelling and want a way to continue to fund your lifestyle, that they show other ways that you can make money.

If you are already making money whilst travelling, tell me in the comments what your favourite way is.  

Cheers,