What Is A Digital Nomad Lifestyle and How Do You Get It?

What is a digital nomad lifestyle anyway? At the time of my writing this we’re at the very tail end of 2018, and being a digital nomad is becoming more popular (and more possible) by the day. Young people, in their 20’s, are flocking to a digital nomad way of life as more and more of them are realizing the opportunities that are available.

Essentially, you can create a stream of  income online that allows you to travel the world without a job. Millions and millions of people spend enormous amounts of time working jobs that they hate. I saw a quote on Instagram a couple weeks ago that basically said if you don’t pursue and create your own dreams, someone else will hire you to pursue theirs. And it’s so true.

As an increasing number of people are realizing their time is worth more than $15 or $20 an hour, they’re looking to other methods, and with 3.75 billion people on the internet, it’s become apparent that the online frontier is where to start.

So How Does It Work?

Here’s the thing: when you’re working a physical job you’re bound by your location. You can’t work somehwere else, because your job (a.k.a. your only source of income) can’t move with you. For people who don’t live near major cities it can even be hard to find employment that pays decently at all!

When you’ve created a stream of income online, or ideally multiple streams, you can be anywhere in the world that has an internet connection and still keep your money coming in. The good news is, the number of places on this planet with some form of working WiFi is… well… astronomical.

Even though I live in New York, I spent 9 days recently hanging out in Scotland and Newcastle on Tyne. I still maintained my business things, wrote a post or 2, posted to my brand’s Instagram and Pinterest accounts, and even did a lot of this totally on the go by tapping into random coffee shop servers. But I had total freedom. By working online, ESPECIALLY in the context of your own business, there’s no one that can tell you where you can and can’t be, no requests for vacation time, no breaks in your pay…

And for us, checking out castles and wandering cobblestone streets was a smidge preferable to sitting in a grey office making phone calls for someone else’s money.

People Are Escaping From Selling Their Soul To Their Boss – HERE’S HOW!

The number of people that are living their lives on the road, making income mobily, is increasing every day. So how are they bringing in the cash?

Generating a sustainable income on the internet is very, very possible. But it’s not easy, and it’s not necessarily fast either. If you’re trying to be totally independent, and make an unlimited income, then becoming a business owner is what you’ll have to do. As long as you understand the necessary mindset – persistence, patience, and a bucket load of consistent action – you should be able to independently drive a full time income to your bank account within a year or 2. Some people do it faster. Others take longer. Many give up, or become too tired and frusterated to succeed. But with the right mentality, work ethic, and education, you can make money straight from your laptop.

People own all kinds of different businesses on the internet. One of the most passive, and most rewarding methods is affiliate marketing.

Practically every company in the world has an affiliate program, where you can promote their links on a blog or social media and get commissions for clicks, sign ups, and purchases through you. A lot of the most successful digital nomads, like World Nate, use this method. By creating a blog or a social media account that ranks high in search engines, which you can achieve by producing quality, helpful content that will interest people, you can get an endless line of people lining up on your website, following you, clicking on links.

Many affiliate marketers have as much money dropping into their PayPal while they sleep, as they do when they’re awake. That’s a great feeling.

I used a program called Wealthy Affiliate to get me to where I am now. It cost me about $320, which is one of the cheapest business start ups in human existence, especially because it doesn’t really involve any more business costs. It trained me, gave me a website, hosted the website, did all the weird techy stuff for me, and then gave me access to a community of other entrepreneurs to help me along.

If the $320 thing freaks you out, or breaks your budget, you can also just build a website on WordPress, and get it hosted on BlueHost, for nothing but pocket change. Then teach yourself, learn the method, and hustle until you make it.

The second method that thousands of people are picking up to create mobile flows of income is freelancing. You’ll hear me say this Joker quote a lot (not that he’s a great role model in general, but….) – if you’re good at something, never do it for free – that’s where free lancing comes in. You can pick up lucrative writing gigs (i.e. blog posts and articles) through Writers Work, or post your profile on Fiverr and start picking up jobs there! Artists, logo designers, graphic designers, even teaching english as a second language through something like VIP Kid!

Again, if you’ve got a laptop and some kind of skill, you’ve got all you need.

Another thing that people are doing to make money online is open a store and dropship through it. I also do this. By using dropshipping, you don’t risk any money on inventory that doesn’t sell. All of the storage and shipping is taken care of by a dropshipping supplier, you fill up your webstore with pictures of the products, and then promote it through social media and Facebook ads targeting the specific groups of people interested in the stuff you’re selling.

Owning your own store through Shopify is now easier than it has ever been. Upfront investment is extremely low, and income potential is huge.

Pursue Freedom

Look, if the freedom of being your own boss doesn’t matter to you much, than there’s no reason to bother with any of this. It’s tougher to make your own money online than it is to just get a job and be paid an hourly wage in exchange for your time.

But if you care deeply about seeing more of the world, and being free, then you owe this to yourself. You actually do. For me, when I sat at a desk for 8 1/2 hours a day, for 5 or 6 days of my week, and stared out the window at this amazing world that I was missing….. it drained me soul. I remembered meeting people from other cultures, playing musical instruments, studying other languages, seeing breathtaking sights from the Pletvice waterfalls in Croatia to the Grand Canyon. And I couldn’t stand missing it anymore. I couldn’t accept any more life revolving around that desk, getting paid in peanut shells.

If you can relate to that, than it’s worth the effort and investment for you to try this. There’s nothing that can stop you but your own hesitations and fears.

The digital nomad lifestyle may be for you, there’s only 1 way to find out.