Becoming A Digital Nomad: A Primer
I know a lot of you guys dream of becoming a digital nomad.
If you’re wondering “what’s a digital nomad?” It just mean you aren’t tied to one location. You work online and can do so from wherever you’d like. As long as you have an Internet connection, you’re good.
You get to travel the world, have a different adventure in a new location every single day, work on your laptop from a beach, or a mountain top, or an exciting city.
Yeah, it’s a pretty awesome lifestyle.
If this is something you want, I hope this article will give you an idea, or some inspiration on how to start.
Becoming a Digital Nomad
Two months ago I decided to leave Vancouver indefinitely. I sold or gave away most of my possessions (made $400 from my old books!) and bought a one way ticket to Thailand.
Why Thailand? Well, since I’ve been here multiple backpacking trips already, it’s familiar. But mostly because South East Asia is affordable, warm, and easy to travel. It’s a good place to start for becoming a digital nomad. That’s why it attracts tens of thousands of them every year.
Chiang Mai is arguably the #1 hub for Nomads in the world. With it’s mix of affordable, high quality housing, great food, fast Internet, and… sexy Thai women, if you’re into that. If your’e a girl, there’s plenty of tattoo artists, scuba instructors and reggae band singers for you (they seem to be the only Thai guys that date foreign women.)
It’s a great place to start for becoming a digital nomad.
Back to me…
I spent a few weeks in Bangkok, then went to Bali, Indonesia for three weeks, and now I’m in Chiang Mai. It’s a great city that could be amazing if it wasn’t for apocalyptic smoke from all the forest fires. They have a serious problem here as Chiang Mai currently has the worst air quality in the world. Just breathing here is equivalent to smoking a pack a day. It only lasts from April to June, but it really sucks.
In a week I’m heading to Cebu Island in the Philippines for five weeks, then I’m going to Germany, Poland, and more of Europe this summer.
Currently, I have no plan to return to Canada for at least a year.
How do I Pay For All This Travel?
Once you let go of that $1500 a month lease, your car payments, cell phone bill, and all those other Western world expenses, you’d be surprised how cheaply you can live. I’ve always been a minimalist, and living out of a backpack doesn’t have to cost much.
Work wise, I’m a writer, and words pay my bills. Words are amazing.
I sell my copy and content writing to other websites, and through my own blog I sell consulting, either live in my workshops, or over the Phone, Skype or Whattsapp.
I have coaches who work for me back in Canada. So if I can’t make it for a bootcamp or mentorship, they teach for me. My coaches rock.
The money I make would be enough to rent a one bedroom apartment in Vancouver and live on Kraft Dinner, but in Asia it allows me a pretty awesome lifestyle.
What About Rent?
Here in Chiang Mai I rent a large, serviced, bachelor apartment with a huge swimming pool for $200 USD per month. I eat out twice a day, drive a motorbike, and hang out with other nomads. I’m even saving money, and I only seem to actually work 2-4 hours per day. I could make a lot more if I hustled a little bit harder, but I love reading fiction, watching movies and exploring new places, more than working.
In South East Asia at least, you rarely need to spend more than $20 a night for decent accomodation.
You don’t need to live in New York or Paris. There are plenty of cheap, but really fun, dynamic cities. Popular locations amongst nomads include:
- Medellin, Columbia
- Krakow, Poland
- Chiang Mai, Thailand
- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Bali, Indonesia
And many more…
For popular Nomad locations, check out Nomadlist.com.
In general, nomads like cheap, fun countries with fast Internet and interesting culture.
What Niche?
If you want to make a living as blogger, Youtuber, or general social media influencer, the easiest subjects to begin with fall into three main categories:
- Health
- Wealth
- Relationships
For men, that’s how to get abs, how to get rich, or how to get girls. For women, it’s how to lose weight, get rich, or keep a man interested.
Those are three main topics, but there are loads of ways to make money online.
Becoming a digital nomad I’ve met so many entrepreneurs. A few that I’ve met were:
- An American girl who sells t-shirts on Amazon. She finds the shirts that are popular, then copies and improves upon them. She currently lives in a $2 usd a night hostel in Siem Reap, Cambodia
- Two twin Canadian brothers who make $8k a month selling kindle books, utilizing a method they learned from an online marketing program called “Kindle Money Mastery” created by ex-dating coach Stefan Pylarinos
- An American scuba diver who runs a team of bloggers that write about scuba diving culture worldwide
- A graphic artist from Kenya who makes animated videos for musicians
- A Thai girl who makes Machinima videos created with a video game called “The Sims”. Some of her videos have millions of views
- A guy who runs an upvote/downvote community similar to Reddit, but based solely on crypto-currency
- A Czech girl that reviews backpacks on Youtube, and her blog
- A British girl that teaches English online
- A direct sales copy writer that specializes in Forex and makes over 300k usd per year. He used to write about pickup too
- A Russian girl with 400,000 Instagram followers. She gets paid for product endorsements—clothing mostly
You Don’t Need To Be Brilliant To Become a Digital Nomad
One of the biggest misconceptions about nomads is that they all run these incredibly unique startups, because they’re super talented, different or special.
You can easily live quite well on $1500 USD a month in many countries outside of the G8. An entry level software engineer starts at about $50k a year. Plenty of companies will pay for part time coders. $25k a year? That’s $2k usd per month before taxes. As long as it’s in cheaper countries, you’ll only have to work ten to twenty hours a week to live a life of travel and adventure.
You don’t need to start your own business. You can easily learn a sought after skill and work for someone else. This is what the vast majority of nomads do. They work online for people, and then in your spare time, create a side hustle, or labor of love.
Why wait for “one day” when you have that amazing idea for a blog that’s totally going to make you a million dollars so you can travel the world, when you can just get a job and do it now.
Job options for becoming a digital nomad:
- Copy Writer
- Content Writer
- Web Designer
- Programmer
- Video Editor
- English Teacher
- Graphic Designer
- Translator
- Youtube Personality
- Blogger
- Amazon Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Drop Shipping
- And so many more…
There are loads of options.
But I don’t know how to code! I can’t write! I can’t edit videos!
You can learn. Becoming a digital nomad has never been easier, or more common than now.
A few places you can learn these skills, for very little cost.
Online Schools
There are hundreds of these online schools.
Personally I love Udemy. There are sales every month and you can grab any course for under $20.
Just browse through these sights and try out any course that interests you. It might lead to becoming a digital nomad six months from now.
Where To Find Work for Nomads?
I was lucky in that I already had an online consulting business. But it didn’t make me enough to travel the world reliably on. But since I’m a writer, I just looked up websites in my niche that were thriving, and emailed them with a well thought out proposal. I was lucky to land a gig that pays me $600 – $2000 USD per month, depending on how hard I work.
But if there’s one website willing to pay a writer, there must be more. And there are. In any Niche, there are dozen, hundreds, perhaps thousands of businesses willing to pay for quality work. You just have to look for them.
But most people start out of content mills, or freelancing website like:
These are good places to cut your teeth, get some experience and build a portfolio. Some freelancers never leave these sites and make six figures working off them.
The downside of these sites is that they draw low paying clients, and the competition is fierce.
If you’re an entrepreneur they’re great places to find talent for jobs you’re too busy, or not skilled enough to do yourself. It can be a bit of a gamble to find the right people though.
That’s why the best way to find work is through word of mouth. By networking with real, live entrepreneurs.
Co-Working and Cafes’
I meet these people in my travels, mostly in Co-Working hubs, or Internet Cafe’s. Here in Chiang Mai I like CAMP, the free workspace on the top floor of Maya Mall.
Co-Working spaces are essentially shared offices. They’re like cafe’s but you usually pay a daily, weekly or monthly rate to work and hangout there. Most cities have great cafe’s with good enough wifi, but co-working spaces are good for networking, if you’re social. I find they help me focus on work, since I’m paying for that time.
Do You Want To Travel The World?
Becoming a digital nomad isn’t impossible. You might have to make a few sacrifices, or give up that job security. But if you want it bad enough, you can make it happen.
Learn a skill, market that skill, get paid, and travel. Then, if you want to you can leverage those skills and create an online business that’s all your own.
Personally, I’d rather have experience than comfort and job security right now. I don’t make a ton of money, but I get to see places most will never see, do things most will never do, and I love it.
I hope this inspired you to think about becoming a digital nomad.
Good luck.
Great article Tony about being a Digital Nomad. Very in-depth and well written. You are a teacher. In more ways than one.
Western women like to date Thai locals that are members of Reggae bands , scuba diver instructors and tattoo artists , l see. The only problem I have with that is that it sounds like tattoos on more women. If you’re dating a tattoo artist I’m pretty sure he’s going to be inking your beautiful , feminine skin. Ugh. I hate tattoos on women. Tattoos on women in my opinion are ugly. It also says something about the woman’s personality hahaha
( Tattooed women probably smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey , also hahaha ). Is it also safe to say they have loud voices ? I wonder what their notch count would be ? Above 10 …
Women with tattoos think that’s cool to have tattoos ( as men also think it’s cool to have tattoos on themself ). There is indeed is a cool factor as far as women having tattoos. However a visually cool woman is different than a visually attractive woman , for me.
I wonder if the women in Poland will have tattoos ? I am going to guess that the answer is: No. Polish women do not unbeautify their skin. Please keep us posted about this important fact Mr. Digital nomad.