Digital nomad lifestyle or running an online business is the most requested topic from my followers and people I meet while traveling. I have resisted it for a long time mostly because there are tons of nomads and travel bloggers already out there. I have no plans of becoming one. 🙂 But since you asked, here’s how I achieved it and my tips how you can too.
Digital Nomad Lifestyle
Let me start with saying that a Digital Nomad Lifestyle is totally doable for anyone!
You do not need to be a developer, designer or a writer to become a nomad. Those are professions where remote working has been possible for years and years. I started my nomadic lifestyle in 2009 and I was not a developer, designer or a writer.
I quit my corporate career because I wanted to travel and to do something else with my life. Nothing wrong with corporate career, but at that time I really just had to leave so that I could figure out what to do with my life.
Since I did not have any clients or even idea how to find one I spent quite a bit of time on Google trying to figure out how I could make this lifestyle possible.
Nobody talked about nomads at that time and nobody even blogged about it. When I landed in Chiang Mai I met few travel bloggers but that was it.
So I searched and searched and found…
Odesk (now Upwork).
Online Freelancing
Odesk, which nowadays goes as Upwork after merging with Elance, and is the worlds largest online freelance marketplace. I signed up with Odesk and Elance, filled out my profile and sent out hundreds of proposals.
Wanna guess how it went?
Yep, not very good.
In hindsight it is easy to see why I was not winning any projects, but at the time it was really hard to take.
Since my dream of remote lifestyle was so strong I just refused to give up. My mindset was “Nothing is going to stop me figuring out how to win freelancing work online!”
I searched, tested, and just kept trying…
And finally it paid off.
I got my first project via Odesk and was hired by one of Odesk largest clients at that time (no names due confidentiality clauses). I got lucky as they did not care that I had no previous history on the site, they cared about my skills and what I can do for them.
So I got my first gig. And once you have one, it was easier to get second. My profile started to look great and eventually clients were headhunting me on platform.
If you are new to Upwork and have hard time getting your profile approved, check this blog post of Upwork Profile Approval Tips.
So now I was making some money but not enough to really travel where I wanted… so the search continued. And I found…
House Sitting
House sitting basically means to live in and look after a house (and pets) while its owner is away. Once I heard about it, I was hooked. I did my first house sitting gig in Chiang Mai, next in Sydney, Australia and then have been all over the world.
When I was in Americas (USA, Panama, Ecuador, Dominican, Colombia) for 12 months I house sat for 11 months.
I had to pay just one month of accommodation during that 12 months.
I saved tens of thousands of dollars by house sitting all over the Americas. I stayed in New York for 6 weeks, beach property for 2 months, Panama city high-rise for weeks and more.
Digital Nomad Lifestyle the quick way
So like I mentioned you do not need to wait for months or years to achieve nomad dreams – you can achieve it with freelancing and house sitting in matter of months or even weeks if you are really motivated.
Because so many ask me how they can have this nomadic lifestyle like I do, I created ThriveNomad, a result focussed program to help you get started with the lifestyle in weeks, not months. We open doors again summer 2018 – add your name to the waiting list now so you don’t miss out when its open again.
FURTHER READING:
