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Do you want to learn how to become a digital nomad?

Have you ever seen those people who are on Instagram and constantly travelling? Do you ever wonder what the heck they do to afford to travel to all of those countries?

I wondered the same thing…

Wouldn’t you love to get paid to travel the world?

I know I would.

You wouldn’t have to stress about planning out your vacation days. You wouldn’t just have to choose one travel destination a year.

You could travel all year long while making money online. You could live your BEST life.

I’m here to tell you how to become a digital nomad.

What Does Digital Nomad Mean?

Digital nomads are people who travel while working. They work remotely rather than coming in to work.

Digital nomads are known to travel all around the world while working from their laptop or phone. They go from place to place without worrying about how they’re going to pay for their travels.

This is a career that allows for financial independence and location independence.

What does that mean? It means that digital nomads can travel to wherever they want and they are their own boss. You can learn how to live debt-free, and you can even learn how to make passive income so you don’t really have to do anything.

But we’ll get into that later…

Keep reading if you want to learn how to become a digital nomad and travel the world.

Why Become a Digital Nomad?

First, why should you become a digital nomad? There are so many benefits of becoming a digital nomad like:

Travel the World

The biggest and most obvious benefit of becoming a digital nomad is that you can travel the world. Digital nomads bounce around from place to place. You could be in Bali one week and Japan the next.

You wouldn’t have to go back “home” until you wanted. You could spend a couple of years while traveling and making money online.

Financial Freedom

Another big benefit of becoming a digital nomad is financial freedom. A lot of the careers that people do while traveling are done from multiple income streams. You can be your own boss. You choose your hours. You choose how much you want to work.

Some people even have passive income streams, so once you create something, you really don’t have to do anything else.

Build Your Dream Life

If you become a digital nomad, you can build your dream life.

You get to wake up everyday and choose how you want to live.

You get to write your own life, and you’re the main character. You want to spend the day at the beach? You can do that. You want to travel to a new country next week? You can do that.

Cons of Becoming a Digital Nomad

With that being said, there are still cons of becoming a digital nomad. Some of those are

• Feeling lonely
• Experiencing burnout
• Making less money than you did at an office job
• Having trouble finding a place to stay

How Much Money do Digital Nomads Make?

Now you’re probably wondering “How much do digital nomads actually make?”

Well, that depends on the job your doing as a digital nomad. There are millionaire digital nomads, and there are digital nomads making $40,000/year.

That answer depends on you.

” 18% [of digital nomads] report making six figures or more and 22% make between $50,000 and $99,999″

Flexjobs

How much you earn as a digital nomad depends on your skills, locations, and how long you’ve been doing it.

You were probably looking for a concrete answer, and I’m sorry I can’t give it.

One tip I can offer is that you try out a job you can do as a digital nomad but stay at home until you feel comfortable traveling.

What Skills do you Need to Become a Digital Nomad?

The skills you need to become a digital nomad depend on what job you’re doing.

In general, you want to have a good hand in technology since that’s primarily what you’ll be using. Some examples of skills that could help you on your journey to becoming a digital nomad are:

• Writing Skills
• Digital Marketing Skills
• Accounting Skills
• Computer Technology Skills
• Copywriting Skills
• Administrative Skills
• Designing Skills

Worried that you don’t have any of these skills? You can start learning now. The good thing about the digital nomad lifestyle is that you can turn something you’re already good at into an opportunity to use that skill remotely and get paid for it.

Where to Start?

There are four routes you can take when learning how to become a digital nomad: Save up money, turn your office job into a remote job, find a new remote job, and use multiple passive income streams.

Money Saving Tips to Travel the World

The first method (and arguably the least favorite) is saving money to become a digital nomad. You might be thinking that this isn’t a digital nomad because you’re not working while traveling.

However, it offers you the same benefits.

You can travel the world and finally live the life you deserve.

Try to find a decent paying job for a few years and work on saving up that money. Take the next year or so off using the money you saved to travel. Once your funds start getting low, find another job and repeat the process.

Here are a few money-saving tips to help you travel the world:

• Create a savings plan
• Start a travel fund
• Create a budget
• Eat out less often
• Cancel memberships you don’t need
• Find free things near you to do
• Buy from thrift stores
• Set goals
• Do money-saving challenges

Turn Your Job into a Remote Job

The next option for you is to turn your physical job into a remote job.

Keep in mind that this is only possible if your job has the potential to be turned into a remote job. This could work really nicely if you’re already doing the work from a phone or a computer.

Try asking your boss if you can work from home one day a week and see what explains. Explain how it could be beneficial. If that works out, try asking for more days until you’re working a completely remote job.

Nervous about asking your boss to work remotely? Check out this guide for exactly how to do it.

Find a Remote Job

If the other options are out, you can find a new remote job.

Some of the tops places to find remote jobs are:

• Flexjobs
• Remote.co
• Justremote
• Virtual Vocations

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Jobs You Can do as a Digital Nomad

Proofread

One of my favorite side hustles to talk about is proofreading. If you enjoy spotting errors in writing and fixing them, this side hustle is for you!

Proofreading entails looking for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. You can also be an editor, which is a little different. As an editor, you actually go in and change the content to make it more readable.

There are several ways you can get started with proofreading.

The first way is through freelancing, which I’ll get into more later. You can find freelancing sites where you can add your service and people will pay you for it. You can do this through sites like Upwork or Fivver.

You can also create your own website and market your services on there.

Some of the requirements needed to be a proofreader are:

• You should love to read
• Master English (spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax)
• Be detail-oriented
• Good time management
• Be able to market yourself

Don’t worry if you feel like you don’t have these skills. You can learn.

Start by learning the basic English rules. Learn punctuation, spelling, and syntax.

Maybe the first thing you think when you hear “proofreading” is “master’s degree in English.”
But you’d be wrong!

Proof reading isn’t just learning English though. You also have to learn how to market your services.

Caitlin Pyle put together an amazing course on proofreading. She not only teaches you about the skills needed to proofread, but also how to start your own proofreading business!

Starting your proofreading business is how you’re really going to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Caitlin’s put together a free online workshop that answers all of the most common
questions about becoming a proofreader, and she even shows you how to use the most popular tools used by proofreaders around the world.

Take a look here: Proofread Anywhere

Freelance

This is the side hustle that I hear about most often, and there’s a reason for that. You may have heard of freelance writing, but that’s not all there is.

Two of the most common freelance websites are Fivver and Upwork.
All you do is set up a profile, set up a gig, and then people can search for and find your service.

If you think you don’t have the skills for freelance work, think again. You can write, take pictures, edit photos, write captions, proofread, make graphics, and anything else someone might need.

Blogging

If you look up side hustles, blogging is guaranteed to come up.

I’ll come right out and say that you’re not going to make money immediately. It takes time to build traffic.

But once you do, you can make crazy amounts of money straight from your home.
Here are some of the blog income reports I’ve read:

• Cassie Scroggins broke $3,000/month
• Fit Mommy in Heels made $11,562 in one month
• Caroline Vencil made over $25,000 in one month
• Ell from Boss Girl Bloggers made $80,000
• It’s a Lovely Life made $2,233,236 in 2019

You can learn more here, but the general steps to starting a blog are:

• Pick a niche and name
• Buy hosting (preferably Bluehost because they’re the cheapest)
• Design you blog
• Optimize for SEO
• Start writing blog posts
• Promote your blog

How to Make Money Blogging

There are a few different ways you can make money blogging.

The first way that comes to mind is through ad revenue. You can place ads on your website through places like Adsense and Mediavine.

Another way you can make money blogging is through sponsored posts. You can reach out to companies or sometimes they will reach out to you to talk about a product or service on your blog.

The most common way to make money on a blog is through affiliate marketing, which I’ll talk about next.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s products or service and get paid for it.

A lot of affiliate marketing companies require you to have a blog, but that’s not always a requirement.

If you don’t have a blog, you can promote affiliate products on social media sites. All you have to do is post the link, and if someone buys something from that link, you will get a commission from that.

My favorite affiliate market programs for beginners are Clickbank and Flexoffers. Both of these sites offer a marketplace of services and products you can promote to earn commission.

If you want to learn more about how to make money with affiliate marketing, Clickbank even has it’s own course that you can access here. <<

Teach Online

Another well-known side hustle to pay off debt is teaching online. I like this because it’s a quick way to make money online.

The best website for this is VIP Kid. VIP Kid allows you to each English to students living in China.

This is perfect for teachers if you’re looking for a little extra money.

This is a legitimate job that you can choose the hours for.

Put in an application, interview, do the training, and get started teaching.
The things you will need include good internet, a headset, a webcam, and it’s also good to have props.

Virtual Assistant

What is a virtual assistant? A virtual assistant is someone who provides services to business or companies. It’s pretty much the same thing as an administrative assistant, but you do this from home

Some of the tasks you could be doing as a virtual assistant include:

• Data entry
• Email management
• Customer support
• Graphic design
• Marketing
• Social media management

Keep in mind you don’t need to have all of these skills to become a virtual assistant. You can create your own virtual assistant business to set your own services, hours and pay.

You can learn how to become a virtual assistance with the the 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistance Success course.

Print On-Demand

This is the most recent side hustle gig I’ve tried.

Print on demand (POD) is when you design a product and submit it to a company, and then they make and ship it to the customer.

The most common POD companies are Printify and Printful. I chose to go with Printful, but the companies are about the same.

I spent a few weeks making designs to go on t-shirts, created the mockups on the Printful website and opened an Etsy store. Then, I connected my Printful to Etsy so it automatically uploaded the designs.

Now I don’t have to touch anything except customer service.

I even got two sales in my first week!

Digital Marketing

The digital marketing industry is constantly growing.

Companies are relying less on things like billboards and more on things like digital marketing.

You can offer your services to local (or not) businesses to create and run their ads and social media for them.

You don’t need a degree. There are tons of online resources where you can learn about things like creating ads and copywriting.

If you start your own business, you can set the pay and often often you want to work.

Amazon FBA

I put this one later on down the list because it can cost quite a bit to get started.

Amazon FBA is fulfillment by Amazon. You choose products to store in an Amazon warehouse and they store, pack, ship, and deal with customer service.

You have to pay to get the products to sell and you also have to pay to have it stored and shipped from their warehouse.

Even though it can be costly to start, this is a great way to make money on the side from home.

There are a lot of resources out there teaching you how to find products to sell and more about Amazon FBA in general.

Start an Online Business

Another good way to start a side hustle is by starting an online business.

You can start whatever kind of business you want! Try selling homemade crafts, recipe cards, clothes you’ve made, thrifted clothes, and so much more!

Consider incorporating drop shipping and selling digital products like I talked about earlier to sell.

The majority of people set up their store on Shopify, but there are other platforms like Woocommerce and Wix.

Keep in mind that some of these storefronts require monthly payments, so the overhead cost can be a little pricey.

Other Remote Jobs you Can Do

Other remote jobs you can try are:

• Computer developer/programmer
• Social media manager
• Accountant
• Customer support
• Copywriter
• Graphic Designer

Passive Income Streams

Last but not least, another method to becoming a digital nomad is through creating a passive income stream.

Passive income means it takes little to no effort to bring in money. Once you get it set up, the money starts rolling in.

You get to sit back and relax while the money comes streaming in. Who doesn’t want that?

Here are some passive income ideas you can do while traveling.

Invest (real estate, stocks, etc.).

Investing in real estate is a great strategy to make passive income. You can buy a multi-family property or vacation home to rent out to make quite a few extra bucks. Another great way to invest is through the stock market.

At least for me, the stock market can be pretty complex and take a while to understand, so I have included this beginner’s guide to investing in stocks.

Sell digital products.

This will take some work to get your foot in the door, but after you create your product, this is one of the best passive income ideas in 2020. E-books are a great idea. Create an e-book that solves a problem and is something you’re interested in or know a lot about. You can also consider selling other digital products, like online courses, art, printable journals, worksheets, and more.

 Amazon FBA.

With Amazon FBA, you find a product to sell, and ship it to an Amazon warehouse where they will pack, ship, and provide customer service for your products. You can even use a service like Jungle Scout to automate the process of finding products to sell.

Peer to Peer Lending.

Peer to peer lending is pretty much what it sounds like. You can use companies like Lending Club and Prosper to lend money to others. Just like any other loan, you will make back what you loaned plus interest. However, this can be risky because there is a chance the person will default.

Summary

In summary, some of the ways you can learn how to become a digital nomad is by:

• Saving up enough money to travel
• Asking your boss to turn your office job into a remote job
• Finding a remote job online through places like Flexjobs
• Creating a passive income stream

Don’t forget to pin it! 🙂