How to Make Money as a Digital Nomad

How to Make Money as a Digital Nomad?

The idea of life as a digital nomad sounds romantic and exciting, like a vacation that goes on forever. But in reality, living life on the road isn’t the same as taking an extended vacation. It’s a location-independent lifestyle that involves supporting yourself through remote work as you travel the world. 

Luckily there are lots of ways that you can make money as a digital nomad. The options include everything from starting a blog and monetizing it through affiliate marketing to selling digital courses or providing online teaching services.

What Is a Digital Nomad?

A digital nomad is someone who travels around from location to location and earns a living online. It’s an exciting lifestyle that allows you to see new places, experience new adventures, and dive into new cultures. 

Are you considering joining the growing number of people living a digital nomadic lifestyle? If so you will need to plan how to finance your travels. You might have some savings that can pay for your initial travel costs, but soon you will need to find a way to bring in more income. Luckily there are many ways to work online and with a little effort, you should be able to find work that’s suitable for digital nomads.

6 Ways to Make Money as a Digital Nomad

There are many ways to earn money as a digital nomad. We can’t cover all of them in this post, but here are some of the most profitable digital nomad jobs:

Affiliate marketing 

Affiliate marketing is a popular way of monetizing a blog and involves promoting businesses and products through your content. You sign up for suitable affiliate schemes, insert affiliate links into your content, and then receive a small commission when a visitor clicks on the link and makes a purchase.

It’s vital to sign up for the right affiliate programs so that you promote products and services that will interest your readers. As a digital nomad, you’re already an experienced traveler and this gives you an important advantage. Your readers will trust your opinions and recommendations, which makes them more likely to click through your affiliate links. Joining Travelpayouts will allow you to apply to affiliate schemes from popular travel brands like Booking.com, Trivago, and GetYourGuide, all from one convenient dashboard.

If you already have a blog that receives regular traffic, you could start earning passive income this way very quickly, and affiliate marketers can earn several thousand dollars per month. Travelpayouts provides support and resources to help our partners get started with affiliate marketing, like our online Travelpayouts Academy. This includes Sharon Gourlay’s Boost Travel Affiliate Revenue Using SEO course, which we recommend to all our new affiliate marketers.

Affiliate marketing is a very popular and profitable way for digital nomads to earn money. This makes signing up for Travelpayouts a fantastic step towards achieving your digital nomad dreams.

Working as a Freelancer

Remote freelance work is ideal for digital nomads because you get to set your own work schedule. Depending on the skills you have, there are many freelance jobs that you could do as a digital nomad. If you are a skilled writer or editor, you could look for freelance writing and copy-editing jobs for blogs and websites. If your experience lies in using social media, you could offer social media management services. Graphic design and online translation are other popular types of freelance work that you can do from any location. 

There are plenty of ways to find work online as a freelancer. You could look for freelance jobs on job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed, but you can also sell your services on freelance websites like Fiverr or Upwork. Clarity.fm is another website worth checking out, where you can offer expert coaching and consultancy services. You might have to set your fees low at first, but once you’ve worked with several clients and built up a portfolio, you will be able to charge more. 

Teaching Online 

Online teaching is a fantastic way to earn money while you’re traveling as you don’t have to limit yourself to teaching students in your location. Most tutoring jobs require you to have a Bachelor’s degree and some sort of teaching certification, but if you apply through an online teaching company like Tutor or Revolution Prep, they will often be able to help you organize your teaching qualification. 

Online Math and foreign language tutors are always in high demand. If you are a native English speaker, you could work online as an English tutor, which is a very popular service in countries like China. These sessions tend to be more informal, as the students generally want to supplement their formal classes with extra conversation practice. As well as your laptop, you will need a reliable Internet connection, a headset or earphones, and somewhere fairly quiet to conduct your lessons. 

Working Remotely

Some people worry that you have to be an entrepreneur to be able to make money as a digital nomad. But remote jobs have become very popular in the last few years and many companies are used to their staff asking to work from home. If you can work from home, you can probably do the job from any other location that you choose!

There are plenty of opportunities for remote jobs, whether you prefer to work for a smaller company or a big corporation. If you don’t currently have a job that will allow you to work remotely, you can search for remote jobs on websites like Monster, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Depending on the sort of work that you’re looking for, it’s also worth checking out niche job boards like Stack Overflow for programmers or Dribbble for graphic designers. 

Selling Digital Courses

Lots of people take online courses either to learn new skills or brush up on the skills they already have. The popularity of online courses means that if you have the relevant skills and experience, creating an online course is a very successful way to make money as a digital nomad. It does require some effort to create and promote a digital course, but this is a great way to earn passive income from anywhere in the world.

First, you need to decide on the topic for your course, which will depend on your own particular skill set. Some popular topics for digital courses include personal finance, social media, and web design. Next, you will need to create your course and there are several popular online learning platforms to choose from such as Skillshare, Teachable, and Udemy. Once you have posted your course and students start signing up, you’ll generally receive a percentage of their course fee.

Becoming a Photographer and Selling Your Photos

If you have a good eye for photography, selling your photos could be a great way to earn money as a digital nomad. Your travels are sure to provide plenty of inspiration for photographs, from the beautiful landscapes and fascinating towns you visit to the delicious food and drink you sample along the way. And you probably already take photos on your travels so why not start making money from them?

You’ll need access to a good quality camera, and a laptop and software to edit your photos. Once you’ve edited your photographs, you can upload them for sale on stock photography websites such as Shutterstock and iStockphoto, or try selling them to magazines and websites. 

How to Choose the Best Way to Make Money as a Digital Nomad?

There are so many ways to make money as a digital nomad and you might feel a bit overwhelmed by all the options available. The best option for you will depend on a variety of factors such as the sort of work you enjoy and the particular skills that you have.

Becoming a digital nomad is a major decision and you need to be certain that you can earn enough to support your travel costs. You could start a side hustle alongside your main job until you have saved enough for your initial costs, or you might decide to combine some of the income streams above. 

But as long as you have a passion for your work and your travel, you can follow your dreams and live the life you choose without the restrictions of working in a fixed place.