How To Travel The World While Working Remotely
In this day and age, with the sweet internet in existence, it's not unusual or unheard of to be working from anywhere in the world while making money online to fund your travels. Chances are you found this post because you're either curious about this kind of lifestyle or looking to accomplish this creative way of living in the life of your own.
Travel the world.
Work remotely.
Live the life you love.
To live a life of never ending travel in this world seems like a dream, often one that is thought to be too farfetched of an idea for most, no? But in a world - this world - that we live in right now, it's most certainly possible. There's a few frequently asked questions I receive and one of them is how do you travel so much? Which comes quite suprising to me because I would actually like to be travelling alot more, and it's something that I'm constantly working towards whether it be a new country, city or even neighbourhood. My curiosity never seems to escape me.
Like anything in life; there's always options. Now, depending on the line of work you choose, here's a few ways that will allow you to travel the world while working remotely.
The term: Digital Nomad.
The lifestyle: Travel the world, laptop in tow, working remotely.
The passion: A love for travel.
The essentials (technical): Laptop, wifi connection, camera (if it's in your line of work like myself)
The essentials (personal): Discipline and self-motivation
Remote Jobs
Remote workers are generally those who are employed by companies that allow you the flexibility of either working from home or remotely. They can be full time, part time or contract roles and suit those who are happy to do the hours or tasks for work, then switch off and enjoy play (aka. travelling the world and exploring new destinations) A couple of websites that are handy for you to find this type of work include Working Nomads and We Work Remotely. If you're already working in a company, a common alternative to slowly transition into working remotely would be to determine whether your job can be done from home, start to shift the office days to working from home (you never know if you never ask!), then eventually transition into working remotely full-time. This alternative has alot of factors though, including time at your current employer, your type of work and the culture of your employer.
Freelancers
Freelancers are self-employed and hired to work for different companies on particular projects. The most common freelancers I've come across are freelance journalists and photographers - or further more to this 'content creators/producers' that combine copywriting, styling and photography as a bundle in their services. Freelancers have more often times than others previously worked for different companies and built a relationship to continue working freelance. Or have started a blog showcasing their work and hustled to get similar type of work for different companies. There are many other options though, a few websites that are a great way to find freelance work online are Upwork (formerly oDesk and elance) and fiverr, which also work the other way around when you're trying to hire someone to do freelance work for you.
Online Entrepreneurs
Build an online business and you're free to work wherever you please. These are the dreamers, the courageous, business owners building their empires; individuals taking risks and working towards their goals and purpose despite having doubts or fears. A few ideas for online businesses that allow you to travel the world while working remotely include e commerce stores, membership sites, coaching and consulting on a particular topic for a niche, vloggers, and no matter how much stigma comes with the title 'blogger' for many different reasons, bloggers are entrepreneurs. Now, yes, anyone can be a blogger, but the difference solely lies in why or more so your purpose for blogging. Those who are serious about making a living from it essentially create a brand and build an online business with opportunties for monetization through advertising, brand collaborations, affiliate marketing, e-products and plenty more ways (more on this in another post!).
Technically, just as I've mentioned above, you don't really need that much. But the most important thing you do need to be able to maintain this kind of lifestyle is alot of discipline and self motivation.This kind of lifestyle that involves travelling the world while working remotely is definitely not for everyone. Some people prefer to have work as work and then go away a few weeks and have 'holiday time' and that's okay but in this case, we're talking about the digital nomad lifestyle - travelling, working on the road/in a cafe/in a co working space/on the beach/at home/pretty much anywhere with a wifi connection and travelling some more.
Over to you - do you think you could live the digital nomad lifestyle and travel the world while working remotely? Or do you prefer to have 'holiday time' as pure holiday time? Leave a comment below, I'm interested to find out!
