26. How to Make Money Online as a Digital Nomad

Have you ever asked yourself:

• What are the best online jobs for digital nomads?
• How can I make money online as a digital nomad?
• What are the pros and cons of working online as a digital nomad?
• What type of job should I choose as a digital nomad?
• How do I start a business as a digital nomad?

In this episode of the podcast, we explore the ins and outs of making money online as a digital nomad. We take a look at the three main ways to make money online - as a remote worker, freelancer, or entrepreneur - and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.

We also share our firsthand experiences with each and provide tips on how digital nomads can find the best online jobs that fit their lifestyle and their goals.

Link to Episode 12: 7 Steps to Starting Your Successful Online Business mentioned in this episode.

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Chapters

• 2:03 The most common obstacle that we see from other aspiring digital nomads
• 3:09 The pros and cons of remote work
• 4:54 Avenues for remote work
• 6:40 What are the differences between a freelancer and an entrepreneur?
• 7:54 What are the pros and cons of freelancing?
• 11:52 How to transition from freelancing to entrepreneurship
• 12:58 What are the pros and cons of entrepreneurship?

Transcript

Welcome to the profitable Nomad couple podcast we have some really exciting news to share with you all today, something really big is coming your way. If you're
somebody who is dreaming of living life on the road and working remotely from your laptop, or you're dreaming of exploring new destinations every day and you want to embrace a life of freedom and adventure as a digital nomad, then listen up! We've been working on designing an offer, especially for you for individuals who want to transform their careers into online work and take their lives on the road. We know that making this transition can be super daunting with so many unknowns navigate, so don't worry because we are providing you with all the guidance and support you need to make your dream of becoming a digital nomad a reality. Stay tuned for more updates on our upcoming launch and until then, keep dreaming big and keep exploring. All right, now let's dive into today's episode. 

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the profitable Nomad couple podcast. We're gonna be talking today about the most common obstacle that we see and hear from other aspiring digital nomads that really limits people from fully embracing and jumping into a digital nomad journey. And that is to find ways to get paid to make money while traveling.

And this is going to be a really good episode you guys, because so many people ask about this, every traveler or every digital nomad has some obstacle to overcome in order to start their journey. And this is a big one for a lot of people, you can start traveling the world by building up big chunk of savings and going out and using that to fund your travels. But then you're more of just a traveler and not necessarily a digital nomad. In order to be a digital nomad, there needs to be some source of income. There are a few different ways to do this. And we're going to talk about them and kind of our experience and journey with each one of them. And kind of how they play together. Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll have an idea of which one sounds best to you, you'll have a direction of what to start working towards. So you can make money while you are working online.

Yeah, and I think the first and most common one that people kind of hear of and maybe aspire to, is to become a remote worker. And a remote worker is somebody who is a full time employee, they work for a company, they have a boss or a supervisor who manages their work as an employee. So obviously, there's some big pros to this, right, you have the flexibility of working from anywhere, you have job security, you have the stability of our traditional employer employee relationship. And a lot of times they'll get good employee benefits as well. Now there are some cons to this, such as reporting to a boss, you don't get to choose what your workload is, you might struggle to develop professionally. So you might be fighting for that promotion ladder without any guarantee of success or raises. And you can get stuck working in the nine to five, which as you travel could turn into the 10pm to 5am or other crazy time schedules that you might be stuck working. Monica and I have a little bit of experience working as remote workers. When we first started our business journey, I got hired as an employee with a yoga company, and that my job was to make sales calls and and promote a different packages that they had. So it was nice, because I could do it from anywhere as long as I had a computer to log into. But it did feel very limiting. It still didn't feel as free because it wasn't something that Monique and I were creating. We were just given tasks and then had to execute those tasks. So it wasn't as creative. It wasn't as freeing as we wanted it to be. But it was a good start on our journey. And it gave us some experience working online.

Yeah, the general consensus I've heard about being a remote worker from other digital nomads is that it can be really hard to kind of balance have good work life balance, and a lot of them end up wanting more freedom than this allows. But it is a really good place to start. The benefits alone are awesome, as well as that job security. If remote working is how you want to start making money. As you travel, there's a couple of different avenues that you can go through. The first one is simply going to your current employer and asking them to go remote. And now I COVID-19 really helped us with this right so most employers understand that you can fully go remote, you can still be responsible and get a lot of your work done. If your employer for some reason doesn't. There's a couple of ways you can try to help them understand what this would be like and that can start with working remote two weeks, and then coming back and then showing them how productive you were and then kind of do Get more on a trial basis and slowly start to work up to where you are fully remote. If that doesn't work, you can just go find a job that is remote. And it's the same process as finding any job anywhere, you you fill out a resume, you go through the interviews, and and then you get hired and you work fully remote.

Not every job, unfortunately, can be done remotely. So if traveling while working is a higher priority for you than your job, then we definitely recommend going and finding a job that fits that lifestyle for you a little bit more. So the alternatives to working as a remote worker and being employed are some of your own business endeavors. Generally, there's kind of two different ways to look at this, it is a little bit nuanced. And we're gonna do our best to kind of walk through the differences and again, our experiences with them. So one option is to be a freelancer. And the other option is to be an entrepreneur. And they have a lot of similarities, but some big differences. And I want to kick off talking about these two by reading a quote by Seth Godin, he really does a good job at explaining kind of the differences between a freelancer and entrepreneur. So talking about a freelancer, he says a freelancer is someone who gets paid for her work, she charges by the hour or perhaps by the project, freelancers, right design consulting advice, do taxes or hanging wallpaper, freelancing is the single easiest way to start a new business. The goal of a freelancer is to have a steady job with no boss to do great work to gradually increase demands so that the hourly wage goes up, and the quality of the gigs goes up to entrepreneurs use money to build the business bigger than themselves. entrepreneurs make money when they sleep, entrepreneurs focus on growth and on scaling the systems that they build, the more the better. The goal of the entrepreneur is to sell out for a lot of money, or to build a long term profit machine that is steady, stable, and not particularly risky to run, the entrepreneur builds an organization that creates change.

So the biggest difference, the biggest advantage to being a freelancer is just how simple it is to get started, right you are a freelancer, just like Seth Godin said is someone who works project by project has a variety of clients. And there's tons of platforms that help them get connected with clients like Upwork, or fiber. So there's lots of really cool pros to being a freelancer, first of all, your flexibility and your autonomy. You get to work on tons of different projects. So it keeps things from getting too monotonous. You are your own boss, you work on your own terms, you have complete control over your working hours, you are responsible for your own professional development. If you want to learn a new skill offer a new service, you can absolutely do that. And it's a quick way to make money, it's really easy to start there really low overhead costs. And you don't really need any specific qualifications. When you're getting freelance clients, they don't, they don't care to see your resume, they don't care to see where you went to school, they just want to see the work that you have produced and can produce. And eventually it has the potential to turn into a full blown business. So it's really easy to transition from freelancer to entrepreneur. In fact, I would probably encourage that eventually it does turn into a business.

It's kind of like the on ramp to the freeway, freelancing could be the on ramp where it's a good way to start building up speed building up business momentum, gain some experience before you're building out full blown packages and scaling and hiring people and all that stuff. Monica and I, when we started working as virtual assistants, we were definitely in this Freelancer space. And even into the beginning of when we started doing web design, I'd say we were kind of still in in that Freelancer space. You know, we had multiple clients with different small businesses who needed some extra help with graphic design or caption writing and things like that we did a whole variety of stuff for lots of different people. Again, it was a really, really incredible way to learn the back end of businesses and how they run and operate and what they need. We had a lot of fun in this phase of our business journey and our digital nomad journey. That's when we started traveling a lot throughout the United States. You know, when we were transitioning from VA work to web design, that's when we lived in Guatemala for a few months. And so we're able to live out of the country and start experiencing that a little bit more. The downside to this though, is I guess kind of the opposite of the pros of being an employee, you have to provide your own benefit. So you're not going to have any insurance packages or things like that. So you're providing your own benefits and you're not paid for paid time off. You don't have PTO or vacation hours or anything like that. You have to do your own tax filings, which can be a little bit of a learning curve to get started with. I think Monica and I are still learning how to do taxes, there is potential to be really lonely. Luckily Monica and I didn't have as big of an issue with this, I think because we were going in it together. But we know a lot of people who struggle with feeling a little bit lonely when they're working online and traveling as a freelancer. There is no guarantee of pay. So you have to continually be going out and finding clients and find your price. checks to make money. So basically, you're still exchanging your hours, your time for money. And that's a really big holdup. And that was a big motivator for Monica and I to switch from freelancing to being entrepreneurs and running a full blown business because we wanted more consistent income, we didn't want to be trading hours for money, we wanted something that would be more self sufficient and kind of run without us there every second of the day. So before we get into that, if you are interested in starting freelancing, whether you want that to be your full time thing, or you want to use it as a way to work towards starting a business, we recommend learn a skill, start doing some sample projects, some mock projects if you need to, or maybe start with some free projects if you need to. And then slowly start charging more, put together a portfolio, something as simple as Google Drive could be a great place and then start getting to work, start providing that service that you want to provide for people.

Yeah, this is definitely the way that we recommend to people. Whenever someone comes to us and was like, hey, I really want to be digital nomad, I really want to make money online. I don't know how to do it. We always recommend starting with freelancing because it's really risk free. It's a really good way to start making money to build your competence. And to give you the freedom to really start exploring the digital nomad lifestyle, and then it's super easy to transition into becoming an entrepreneur.

Yeah, it's a it's a good like middleman, I guess. So you could, if you're not 100% sure about wanting to live abroad or travel abroad and be a digital nomad. You can try it out by freelancing. If you love it, turn it into business. If it's not for you, you can go back and find work elsewhere. Entrepreneurship, you guys is incredible. This is the most incredible journey that Monique and I have been on. It's man, you learn a lot, and you discover a lot about yourself. And it's really amazing. So entrepreneurship, like Seth Godin said in his quote earlier, it's building something bigger than yourself is building something that creates change.

Some of the pros as well as all the same pros that you get with freelancing are that you have the highest level of autonomy and control, you develop a broader range of skills, build reoccurring revenue, have the potential for extreme financial success, there is no income cap, when you own your own business, kind of like was mentioned earlier with freelance there is in a way an income cap with freelance because you only have so many hours in the day that you can potentially be working, you have control over your own destiny, and you get to do work that is meaningful to you. And you get to really flex your creativity and your innovative muscles. As you move forward with your business. You also have the ability to automate your business more, and that frees up a lot of your time. So you're no longer trading that time for money like you are as a freelancer. 

We love this stage of being a digital nomad. And we love having a business that we've we've started because it really does offer so much more freedom than we've experienced being remote workers or being freelancers, we don't want you to think that there's no cons, we're going to be fully transparent. There are some downsides to this. For one, you still got to file your own taxes.  You can tell that tax season is coming up, it's weighing on our minds a little bit. It's lurking in the shadows just around the corner. Being a business owner carries the most risk and the most responsibility as opposed to being a freelancer or a remote employee, there's the highest possibility of failure, which can be really scary, it's a little bit intimidating. But again, high risk, high reward, right. So it's really satisfying. It's really, there's a lot of benefit and pay out when you become successful with this. There are a lot of hats to wear, which is kind of a pro and a con at the same time. Because it's really exciting to learn so many different things. But it can also be overwhelming. Depending on the business that you're starting up, it could take a lot of time and more capital to get off the ground and to get going. And it can just be generally difficult to start generating revenue success with the business takes a little bit more time than it does with freelancing. And so you put in more energy more work more money, again, the power is going to be a little bit bigger, but the upfront cost is is definitely there. I don't know I want to go back to the pros because it's I don't want to scare you away from it. It really is an incredible journey to be on and it's been life changing for us. 

So if starting a business and being a full blown entrepreneur, while living as a digital nomad is something you're interested in, here's how to get started. It's actually pretty similar to starting as a freelancer. First, you got to develop a business idea. So what is it that you want to create and scale? We recommend doing some market research and kind of finding out what other businesses are out there that are offering the same or similar things. What needs are out there? What questions are your ideal clients asking? We recommend you start piecing together a portfolio just like you wouldn't if you were doing Just freelancing, we have a whole episode that we did earlier about the seven steps to start a successful business. If you want to go back and listen to that, we'll link that in the show notes in the description. And then it just requires lots of trial and error, you're gonna learn a lot of things, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes, I guarantee you, but that's part of the fun of it. And every time you make a mistake, you can learn from what you did wrong, and change it in the future. And it's again, it's a whole journey, being an entrepreneur isn't a destination, it really is a journey. Yeah,
all of these three options are really good ways to start making money to get your feet wet to start your digital nomad journey. And the great, I mean, the greatest thing I preach this all preach it all day, up and down, right, is that as a digital nomad, you get to choose, right, so you can start as a remote worker, and then later down the road, you can pivot and you can start freelancing or start your own business. Or you can start your own business and then decide, hey, you know what, I'd rather be a W two employee and switch over to remote work. So you get to decide which one of these is right for you in the time of life that you're in. So I really want you to reflect on this episode and reflect on each workstyle that we outlined and try to figure out which one is going to be best for you right now today to get your journey started. And once you figure that out, definitely go back to episode, the episode that we have linked in the show notes again, with the seven steps of how you can start building your business or your freelance opportunity, or go schedule an appointment with your employer to talk about being remote.

There really is no right or wrong here, you guys again, it's it's whatever fits the life that you want to create. We always tell people you are the author of your own story you get to make your life however you want it to be. And there's not a right way to do it and there's not a wrong way to do it. So yeah, definitely explore these ideas start working towards creating the life that you want to live. Alrighty, travelers that is a wrap for today's episode, we hope that you found it informative and helpful on your journey to becoming a digital nomad. We want to also remind you that our new service is just around the corner, and we can't wait to share it with you guys.

But before we sign off, we have one more thing for you. As a thank you for tuning in. Today we've put together a free list of ways to make money online. So whether you're just starting out on your digital nomad journey, or you're already living the dream, this list is packed with valuable ideas to help you build a successful and sustainable online career. So don't wait to head down to the description of this episode and download your copy today.

Thanks again for joining us on this journey and remember to stay curious, stay adventurous, and stay connected.