How to travel the world for free
If you’ve followed me and the blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve done my fair share of travelling. You’ll also know that I’d done a lot of it for free. Well, not free. I had to put A LOT of work in and gave value back. But in monetary terms, nothing left my wallet.
Examples can be found here, here and here.
To do this, there are two options.
Both require you to start your very own blog. Here’s how to do it.
Option 1 - Pitch, pitch, pitch
Your first option is the most straightforward. Create yourself a blog. I recommend setting up something super easy on Squarespace. Populate this with lots of content focused on the sort of niche you want to target. If you’re looking to get free travel, then having lots of city guides and activity reviews is a good way to go.
Once that’s done, you’ll need to tick the following boxes:
Leverage
The easiest way to do this is to have your blog generating a decent amount of traffic (5k per month is fine to start) or to have an Instagram account with a good amount of followers. These two together are more powerful than just one alone.
Outreach
You’ll need to reach out to the tourist board of the place you want to visit. If you want to visit Tokyo for example, reach out to their tourism board and pitch to have them fly you out, source your accommodation and rustle up an itinerary.
In return, they will get some fantastic coverage that will generate more business for their city. This is the trade. You are providing immense value to them and in return, they are showing you the best of what their city has to offer.
Deliver
If you continue to deliver for these places, creating fantastic content and delivering value, you can show this to more and more tourist boards as proof of concept and snowball your operation. In fact, you could be hitting a new place every weekend if you pitch your socks off.
Option 2 - Post, post, post
So your second option is a bit more nuanced because you’ll have to get yourself an accountant (unless you’re pretty hot with your numbers).
With this option, you simply just pay for everything, but make sure you post about it incessantly.
This way, you should be able to make a case to the tax man that these purchases are wholly and necessarily for business purposes.
This is not financial advice so bear that in mind.
You can learn more about all the cool stuff bloggers may be able to get through on their expenses using this link: https://www.keepertax.com/tax-write-offs/social-media-influencer
Tag & CTA
If you’re leaving town for work then your travel and accommodation is expendable. Tag the places you’re staying, the airlines you’re using and make sure you always leave a call to action for viewers and readers so they can take a look at these companies.
That way, your expenses can be claimed because you are genuinely driving traffic and business for these places.
Pay correctly
Pay with your business card. This way, all expenses are going through your business and it’s all recorded correctly. You want everything to be completely above board. So whilst you have to pay up front initially, you can claim all of this back off your profits at the end of the year, meaning instead of lining some government official’s pockets, you’ve had the time of your life ✈️
Submit
Submit your taxes via an accountant. This is always the safest and most effective way to double-check your expenses and ensure it’s all submitted 100% legally and efficiently.
LEARN MORE ABOUT EXACTLY HOW I TRAVEL FOR FREE
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?
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