How To Be A Nomad With No Money - A complete guide
So you want to be digital nomad? This blog will teach you how to be a nomad with no money and working remotely.
A guy in one of the private communities I’m a member of recently asked me how it was that I got started in ‘digital nomad-ing’ and how I actually make my money. Whilst I gave him a brief breakdown of things he could be doing, I thought it would be good to expand this out into a longer post that might help some of you blokes out - as this covers exactly how I made money as a nomad before I had money.
This isn’t a guide on money-making schemes. It’s more aimed at income-generating skills that give you enough money to live well whilst allowing you to be location independent AND scale if you so wish.
I’ll make a list of each and ideas on how to scale. They’re all intentionally low barriers to entry, so anyone can at least try these and begin living the digital nomad lifestyle while traveling the world as a remote worker.
🚨 A quick FYI - a lot of the scaling options are similar. Most scaling solutions are the same across all industries so I am repeating myself a little bit. But hopefully they just hammers the point home even more.
How to become a digital nomad?
If you want to find out how I became a digital nomad using this blog and how you can do exactly the same thing, check out my course here. For more information about how to free yourself, check out the video below 👇
It teaches you everything you’ll need to create a successful blog, freeing yourself from the 9-5 and allowing you to travel the world for free, making crazy money whilst doing it.
What are you waiting for?
Copywriting
This is one of the lowest barriers to entry in the freelance trade. If you can write in any guise, you can be a copywriter. Sites like Fiver, UpWork and People Per Hour are making this easier than ever. You can write copy for ads, daily content for sites (I used to write 10 articles PER DAY for the largest forex business in the UK and their sister companies), long-form SEO-optimised guides, brand guidelines - the list goes on and on. There’s also no ceiling for copywriting. If you are good enough, you may end up writing for huge publications such as the Esquire or GQ.
It’s different for service providers such as web developers who have to be proficient in many different design languages. If you only know CSS and Squarespace for instance, you’ll never design Nike’s new website. But if you are an excellent copywriter, you may well design the slogan that adorns the homepage.
This is THE freelance gig to get into if you want to be a digital nomad asap.
How to scale?
Up your rates.
Take copywriting courses.
Train a team up and have them write articles for you. Especially useful for spin pieces where you are just repurposing existing content to pad out news sites.
Translation
The overwhelming majority of those outside the UK, US, Canada & Australia, etc. speak English very well. So automatically you are extremely qualified in a very niche industry that those in the countries mentioned don’t really have access to. This can be done anywhere in the world!
You can start off doing translation gigs on jobs boards and one day after amassing an excellent reputation, you may find yourself translating for huge foreign sports stars or being the go-between in crunch talks between the UK and France. This is another opportunity with absolutely no ceiling as long as you really brush up on the languages you speak and all of their idiosyncrasies.
How to scale?
Up your rates
Take linguistics courses
Find people similar to you in your area with an interest in language. Create a team that are similar to yourself but with different strengths. For example, some excel in high pressure environments and some like to do their translation behind a screen for article proofs. Once built out, you can manage this team. Being from a similar area you can have solid rapport and eventually you can hire a general manager to step in and let it run itself.
Web design
This is my main income source now and it is EASY to do. If you utilise low-code platforms such as Squarespace and Wix you can create beautiful sites that are easy to manage for your clients and that they are willing to pay mega money for. Take some additional courses, read around online and build your portfolio. In next to no time, you’ll be easily making dream-level income.
How to scale?
Up your rates
Hire a junior designer
Use templates to free up more time for more clients
Slowly build a team and remove yourself as the bottleneck
Graphic design
For graphic design, you might have to have some level of artistic inclination. But it can definitely be learnt. The Adobe suite is so much more accessible to all skill levels now making it easier than ever to get to grips with pro-level software. If you’re really looking at being a digital nomad, the graphic design route would be fruitful, as you can do a lot of it from an iPad meaning it takes pretty much zero room in your bag/case. Imagine being able to make 6-figures from this tiny little screen that slots inside your backpack whilst sunning your balls in Bali? Ideal.
How to scale?
Download professional programs from Adobe or learn how to do work faster on Canva - this is a great nomad jobs for beginners
Take a course or 2. This is quite an important step for graphic design as skill is very important.
Develop a workflow
And again, build yourself a team when the work stacks up too high. Artists come from every single country in the world, so you may be able to find a world-class graphic designer who is willing to work for 15% of what you would actually charge a client. Give them a 5% tip, keep them onside and you’ve got yourself a money printing machine.
English teaching
A bit more hands on, but if you speak English well, you can travel to whatever country you want and get a job teaching English to classes or private students. A lot of rich families will pay to have their child tutored by English speakers. I had a friend who taught English to Russian royalty 😳 and another friend who lived with a German family rent-free whilst also being paid, just for teaching their kid English for 2 hours per day.
If you crave even more freedom from teaching English, you can do it via zoom to classes or privately. This is an even more viable option thanks to corona and helps to expand your target market to pretty much anywhere around the world.
How to scale?
Up your rates.
Market your services and teach to larger classes.
Build an online English academy. Learning softwares are making this quite a viable option now.
Same as above, but pre-recorded. If you build an English-learning course with a high success rate you’ll have a passive income for life with very minimal admin.
Blogging and Freelance Writing
As a lot of you will already know, this is where my digital nomad journey began and what laid the foundation for a lot of my success. Blogging taught me how to create content for social media, take great photographs, be an effective copywriter, design beautiful websites, understand SEO, network with high-level people and so much more.
If you can succeed at being a ‘blogger’ you can succeed at any form of online hustle. The best thing about getting into blogging is that the barrier to entry is SO LOW. You can create a cheap website, hook up a cheap domain and literally write about anything you want. Eventually, you will begin to generate traffic. This will be hyper-targeted traffic because these people are coming to your website to look for specific content.
This is where you can monetise. You can place ads on your site from Google who do it automatically for you. Or you can pitch companies on monthly retainers to place banner ads on your site. You can also use my Free pitching template to make your digital nomad journey even easier.
Who doesn’t love free stuff (and potentially free travel)? You can even set up your own store filled with merch - the possibilities really are endless when you’re looking to generate income from your blog. Once you have a bank of articles done, they will constantly make you money too, so it can be a real passive earner with enough traffic.
How to scale?
Charge larger fees for featured posts.
Have an outreach specialist pitch to companies for you to scale your online business. These specialists can be full time or part time.
Hire writers who know SEO well. Even if their English isn’t top drawer, their skills in SEO will still generate much more traffic for you. You can always proof their work before setting it live.
Get guest post submissions. A great way of generating free content and also helping the writers with an authoritative backlink.
Affiliate Marketing - How to Make Money as a Nomad
This is kind of in the same vein as blogging, but with more of a laser-focused approach to what the website aims to do. With blogging, you can post more rambling-style content interspersed with the money-spinner stuff. Affiliate marketing is all about the sales. Affiliate marketing sites work well if they are based around reviews and listicles. This type of content lends itself very well to being able to link out to affiliate products dozens of times within the same article without looking spammy. You can also approach affiliate marketing from the social media side of things too.
Posting links to products on your story (if you have that function), having links in your bio and even just in messages to people who are interested in the products you talk about. There are lots of ways to bag affiliate sales. One of the best is Amazon affiliates if we’re just talking about ease and linking to amazon.com. As long as the user clicked your link, you still get the commission on any purchase they make within 24 hours. Considering how many people use Amazon daily, I wouldn’t bet against this being a big source of income for those of you looking to get started quickly.
Be sure to check out the affiliate advertising program description before signing up!
How to scale?
Negotiate larger affiliate commission percentages where possible.
Get a team of writers to write the articles for you (I used to do this for a Muay Thai affiliate site who were making big, big money simply reviewing equipment they hadn’t even tried…).
Hire somebody to scour the web for the best affiliate programs and sign you up. This will free up a lot of research time and allow you to either write more, negotiate more or simply have more free time as a digital nomad.
Social Media Management - Digital Nomad Jobs for Beginners
Most of us have experience with social media. We all know what it’s like to be on one side of the algorithm, consuming content produced by others. Because of this, we know what people like - we are people. If you are someone who’s organised, can write good captions, has time to engage with users on social media and knows platforms like Instagram and TikTok like the back of your hand then you can make money simply taking over somebody’s account and running it for them.
A lot of business owners today are STILL not tech-savvy enough to take full advantage of the true potential of social media. If you can show this to them, their minds will be blown and they’ll think you are a master - which you are of course… One thing to note with social media management, a lot of people are under the impression that it’s easy to do.
You’ll often get something along the lines of “oh, my grandson will manage the social media side for us for free, he loves MySpace!”. You need to be prepared for this and be able to make a case for why they need a professional. If you build up a nice bank of case studies, you’ll have ample ammo to show the night and the day difference between a hobbyist and an expert.
How to scale?
Utilise scheduling software like Hootsuite to automate posts and remove yourself from the majority of the process.
Up your rates
Use templated posts to reduce decision fatigue.
Build a team. Since the management can be done at any time due to software, look at hiring people in lower cost-of-living areas that still speak excellent English.
SEO Specialism
This is a skill that everybody who has a website, social media profile or YouTube channel wants. You can choose to specialise in all of these areas or niche down to just one. But at the end of the day, EVERYBODY who wants to make money online needs SEO. If they have no level of search engine optimisation then they’ll never be found and they’ll never make any money.
That’s where you come in.
If you can up-skill yourself to a level where your input generates your clients insane returns, they’ll want you on retainers, they’ll tell their friends about you (if they’re in different industries) and you’ll begin making huge sums. You don’t even need that many tools. SEM Rush is good and Google has lots of free resources to keep on top of trends. Add a course, some mentorship and some real experience into the mix and your life as a global traveller SEO wizard begins to look pretty rosy.
How to scale?
Up your rates
Take a course
Find a mentor
Whitelabel for larger SEO firms
Slowly build a team and create an agency in your image
Other ideas
Other honourable mentions (that I haven’t done personally so can’t advise on) that have a slightly higher barrier to entry but may yield huge returns are:
📹 Youtube automation
💸 Drop shipping
🖥 Video editor
📱 SMMA
TL/DR
Look into the following industries if you want to free yourself from location-dependent work:
Copywriting
Translation
Web design
Graphic design
English teaching
Blogging
Affiliate marketing
Social media management
SEO specialism
If you have any digital nomad jobs that I didn't cover in this list, feel free to get in touch and I can add some more remote jobs!
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