Are you ready to start living a laptop lifestyle? Here are some great ways that you can become a digital nomad, and earn money online as you travel.
Living a Laptop Lifestyle
Whilst living a laptop lifestyle isn't mainstream (yet), we seem to be living in the era of the digital nomad. Those few Generation Xers who did the ground work are being followed by a steady stream of millennials who can see the benefits of a work/life/travel balance. Who wants to be stuck in an office in Grimsby when you can work from a beach in Thailand? Why work for a corporation when you can work for yourself? Living the laptop lifestyle enables you to break out of the system, and define your own life. What do I know about it? I do it myself, and last year took it a step further working from my laptop as I cycled from Greece to England!
Ways To Earn Money Online As You Travel
All that sounds great, but how exactly can you earn money online when you travel? Here's just a few ideas, some of which I use myself. Note – I think it's very important to have different streams of income when working online as you travel. This way, when one stream has a slack month, the other streams may balance it out. An ‘all your eggs in one basket' approach has its limitations.
Freelance Writing
This is the quickest and easiest way to earn money as your travel. There are also many different entry points depending on your skill, ambition and ability. If you are happy cranking out 500 word rewrites every half hour, you will most likely get a steady stream of customers from Fiverr. If you want to value your time more, put yourself on Upwork and set a higher rate. Are you skilled enough, and most importantly have the contacts to write for magazines and newspapers? There is some nice money to be had here. Freelance writing is a great way to start living a laptop lifestyle, as you can literally do it from anywhere in the world.
A Travel Blog
I hesitate to put this in, as to be honest, it's not an easy thing to do. That said, with perseverance, hard work, and commitment, you can get your travel blog on a paying basis. There are a number of ways that you can go about monetising a travel blog, such as including affiliate links among others. Can it work? Yes it can, and I do make money from this blog. Keep in mind that this travel blog has been online since 2005 though!
Travel Market place
You could take things a step further from a travel blog, and develop an additional online travel marketplace. Basically, by using travel marketplace software, you can put together an online travel agency. This could be in addition to your travel blog, or working in harmony with it. This way you could offer things such as walking tours, flights, hotel bookings and car rentals from one integrated platform.
An e-commerce site
There is a growing trend for digital nomads to have their own e-commerce sites. At the moment, the buzz is all around having a Shopify store. The general principle is that the shopify store acts as a middleman. Customers place their orders, and then you full-fill the orders by having the goods drop-shipped from a third party – Normally located in China. The main attraction to this way of operating an online business, is that you don not need to deal with any physical goods yourself. Once you receive an order, you then arrange for the goods to be delivered directly to your customer. That's living a laptop lifestyle indeed!
Other ways to earn money online as you travel
Basically, if you can provide a skill or service that people need, and that doesn't require your physical presence, you can start living a laptop lifestyle. Whether you are a web designer, graphic artist, language teacher, motivational coach, or social media manager, you can be location independent. If you haven't already, I suggest you take a look at the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris. you can also find out more about how to fund your travels, by taking a look at how to work and travel around the world.
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