When you’re someone who will never be happy working in a cubicle for a faceless corporation, then being out on the road making your way in life feels so much better.
Getting to travel around, explore new cities, towns and countries on a regular basis feeds your soul and makes every day a new adventure. Once you’ve done this, going back to a day job is nearly impossible.
One of the challenges of being on the road is to make money while traveling.
You could be moving around every few weeks and changing time-zones and IP addresses on a regular basis. How can you keep afloat financially, and what options are there to find paid work to keep money flowing in to fund your nomadic existence?
Here are 5 ways to make a decent living while on the road.
How to Make Money While Traveling
1. Become a Remote Worker
A remote worker is usually someone who works directly for a company but does so from a distance.
They may (or may not) be required to attend periodic meetings but usually, these are only occasional, and notice is given.
Some companies will accept phoning in or video conferencing rather than having to attend in person. Though do consider the time difference issues when dealing with a US corporation from continents that are time-zone unfriendly.
When needing to attend virtual meetings, you’re better off situated in the Americas than you are Asia or even Europe.
Any remote worker will still need a good resume and cover letter. Here is a resume sample that gives you some idea about the quality of resumes that other applicants may be using.
Many people wish to be a remote worker now, so the competition is stiff for these positions. You need to look your best on paper before applying.
2. Be a Freelance Writer
Being a freelance writer is another way to make money while traveling.
You can work for a content mill, a team of professional writers, find individual clients, or work as a staff writer on an established blog.
The pay runs from 1c per word to dollars per word depending on whether you’re writing for a tiny website or a glossy big-name magazine with an expansive budget.
It does take time to build up a quality portfolio of published work.
You’ll be up against former journalists at the top end and everyone else at the bottom end.
Usually, a new freelance writer will have to accept lower pay until they can make better contacts and move their rates higher. They also will need to improve their writing ability and won’t be offered more until they’re worth it.
3. Buying and Selling Websites
Buying websites either privately or through marketplaces like Flippa, Empire Flippers or other agencies is an option for the more entrepreneurial travelers who have money to spend.
Websites can be purchased to hold them for their cash flow.
This approach should see a website being similar to an oil well – a wasting asset – that pays out cash until the oil runs dry.
For websites, they earn from advertising and/or affiliate commission on product sales until the website traffic dies.
Adding fresh content to a site often helps it retain its traffic for longer. That’s because Google is focusing on the freshness of site content now and is reluctant to refer more searchers to sites that haven’t been updated lately.
A different approach to website investing and a way to make money while traveling is a value-based style.
Here you buy a website that’s a little down on its luck. Perhaps it hasn’t seen any new articles for a few months (or years) and has a dated design.
With a little attention to the design, faster web hosting, a smattering of new articles, updating the old articles, and promoting it online, a moribund site making only a few bucks a month can transform into a real earner.
It’s then up to you whether to hold onto the digital asset for the cash flow, flip it on a marketplace, or sell through a private deal.
Read also: How This Family Guy Made $1,250,226 from 3 Blogs
4. Graphic Designer
A graphic designer is a good option for anyone who is a dab hand at digital graphics on Photoshop or another suitable app and wants to make money while traveling.
Creating website mockups for web designers, logos for companies and new websites, and letterheads for brand makeovers is steady work for designers worth their salt.
Designers offer their best ideas at 99designs or sell packages either on their own site or on different marketplaces. Like with freelance writing, the better a graphics designer is at marketing, the more profitable they’ll be.
If you want to get started in graphic design and create a career out of it you can start by taking free online courses, watching video tutorials, and readingbooks on graphic designto get more proficient and build more skills.
5. Start Blogging
Making money as a blogger is a long-term pursuit but a rewarding one.
Most blogs don’t see 50,000 monthly page views until well into their 2nd or 3rd year, and this is the popular ones. Most bloggers tend to give up after a few months when they’re not a huge success right out of the gate.
Money is made from blogging through advertising, affiliate commission by referring product
It depends on the niche that you choose to enter how profitable a blog will be. If you’re able to sell a service off the back of the audience you build, that’s also a good way to monetize too.
Read also: How I Made $3,382 Blogging Last Month
There are numerous ways to make money while traveling. Most are digital-based forms of work which lend themselves to the use of a computer and connecting to the internet from anywhere in the world.
However, it’s up to the individual to develop a way to make a living that’s best suits them and the market they wish to appeal to.
