Quitting your day job, snagging a remote job that pays well and nomading around the world. That’s the dream, right?
I know that feeling.
When I graduated from college, I explored through examples of nomads and came to know about the laptop lifestyle. Tim Ferris’s idea of the ‘new rich’ fascinated me.
So I gave up on the idea of wanting to have a traditional career and focused my energies on finding top paying digital nomad jobs. I ended up becoming a content marketer and have lived wherever I want (including the Himalayas for multiple month long “working vacations”).
However, I’ve come across a gazillion nomad examples that do design, blogging, writing and a lot more. In the article, I’ll guide you with the steps to find work that will allow you to travel the world. Let’s go!
Alright, now I know what your next question might be: how do you find digital nomad jobs? Well, I’ve got the answer covered in the next section.
Curious about the kind of work Digital Nomads do? Here are the Top 5 Digital Nomad jobs…
As companies open to the idea of “work from home”, many jobs are opening up to remote work now. But certain jobs are more convenient and hence prevalent among nomads. If you’re an aspiring traveler, here are the top 12 professions that fit well with a traveler’s lifestyle.
1. Freelance Blogger/Content Writer/Copywriter (Later, Consider Becoming A Content Marketer!)
Arguably, the most straightforward remote job you can get started with is copywriting/blogging for businesses. I have worked as a content writer for the Foundr magazine and as a copywriter for various businesses.
If you’re inclined towards writing, then the above careers make sense. However, remember that you won’t write for fun, it would have a business objective tied to your articles.
What skills do you need to learn?
The principles of writing for a business audience and optimizing your content for search engines. To get paid top dollar, you also need to work on your marketing and negotiation skills. In the beginning, I remember rejecting a lot of low-paying writing work to make space for well-paying projects.
What kind of pay can you expect?
While being dependent on the targeted niche, you can start with getting paid around 5 cents/word (or $50 per 1000-word article). Once you’ve built a portfolio and develop niche expertise, you can command MUCH higher rates (upwards of $1,000 per blog post).
Make A Living Writing Pay Survey found that with experience you increase your chances of getting paid $76-$100.
How to get started with freelance blogging?
Choose a niche to build your portfolio and publish about five articles on Medium. Now, use these articles to pitch guest posts in relevant industry publications and try to get published at about 5 of them.
Next, create a portfolio page on Contently (here’s mine) and start applying for jobs through the Problogger job board. You can also cold pitch to clients that are actively blogging and pitch your writing services.
I talk about my freelance writing journey in detail about the above steps in an interview with Harsh Agrawal.
You can also read my interview at Writers In Charge.
As you become better at writing, consider becoming a full-stack content marketer…
Essentially, a writer only writes. However, you can cover more bases: find subjects that are relevant for a business and promote the content you create. The idea is that your writing should attract targeted traffic that affects the bottom line of a business.
Ryan Robinson turned towards becoming a content marketing consultant once he was prolific in writing. Ivan Kremier could afford traveling to freaking 15 countries in 8 months recently because of his content marketing career. None of his clients question him “so, where do you work?”
So the message is clear:
Once you are great at the writing bit (copywriting, content writing, or freelance blogging), you should start learning SEO and content marketing, and how they complement each other. This brings us to the next digital nomad job on our list.
2. SEO Consultant
Most businesses are on board now that content marketing works. The top concerns for businesses that remains is the changing algorithms of search engines.
So if you can understand the intricacies of search bots and get businesses on the first page of Google, you’ll be in demand.
What skills do you need to learn?
Every year, Google rolls out 500-600 changes. You need critical thinking to discern the major updates that require your attention. Also, content marketing complements SEO well. So you need to learn to write SEO-optimized content after doing some good old keyword research (part of on-page SEO).
It also helps to learn the basics of technical SEO as it plays a key role in uplifting a site’s rankings (it’s majorly about site speed, website architecture, and internal linking). Further, you’ll also need to build relationship building skills (to snag backlinks for your content). Lastly, you need data-analytics skills to align business KPIs that enable a sound SEO strategy.
What kind of pay can you expect?
In their survey, Ahrefs found that 50% SEO’s charge between $75-$200 per hour.
You can also charge a monthly retainer for SEO. And 23.08% of respondents charged $501-$1,000 per month.
I know the pricing is all over the place, but the good news is that experience pays well.
How do you get started with offering SEO services?
Unlike your marketing MBA, SEO isn’t about learning theory and getting certifications. The results of a site that you personally built from the ground up is the best way to demonstrate your skills.
Nat Eliason, founder of an SEO-focused content marketing agency says that results are probably the best way to generate leads. He has built a tea company, Cup & Leaf which he started as a blog case study and grew it to 100k visitors.
3. Social Media Marketer
On its survey on blogging, Orbit Media found that almost all bloggers promote content through social media. More importantly, that has been the trend for the last five years.
What does it mean for you?
Social media is no longer the new kid on the block, yet it remains an important marketing channel for businesses.
What skills do you need to learn?
Social marketing isn’t about scheduling links to updates about your site on social media. You need to learn how to leverage social media platforms to help businesses achieve their goals.
Generally, social media is seen as a customer service and brand awareness channel. Hence community management, content creation, curation, adapting to the native features of social media and data analytics is useful.
HubSpot talks about the skills of social media managers here in detail and recommends the following top 6 content creation skills.
What kind of pay can you expect?
The Buffer Transparent Salary calculator reckons you can make $71,826 living in a city with an average cost of living.
Payscale research says that you can make an average of $15.31 per hour. However, don’t get disheartened because with an increase in experience, you can expect better pay. As per the Social Media Strategies Summit blog, here are the typical fees based on experience :
- Green (0-3 years experience): $15-$50/hr
- Intermediate (3-5 years experience): $50-$100/hr
- Advanced (5-10+ years experience): $120+/hr
How do you get started on the path to become a social media marketer? Understand how to create content that generates user engagement and builds relationships.
Again, the results of growing a social media following for a brand and helping achieve business results matter. It’s best if you master marketing a single platform instead of trying to learn marketing on every platform (leave that for Gary Vee and his team).
If you gain expertise in a specialized social media skill (like bot marketing), then you can charge a premium for it. For instance, marketing consultant Jeffrey Katz, has an ultra-specific pitch – he grows Instagram handles from 0 to 5,000 followers in 30 days.
4. Blogger
Blogging is most commonly propagated gateway to live with freedom. Ryan Biddulph even started his blog with the name: “Blogging From Paradise“, his pitch is “Retire to a Life of Island Hopping.”
Indeed, Ryan creates videos while strolling on beaches in Thailand and shares cozy pictures of his hammock.
Similarly, Jon Morrow, the millionaire blogger and the founder of Smart Blogger, wrote an article for Problogger that went viral. He demonstrated his blogging lifestyle with an attention-grabbing headline that made a bold promise.
Let’s take a look at what blogging takes to get started.
What skills do you need to learn?
When it comes to blogging, it’s about creating high-quality content, building relationships, traffic generation and content promotion skills and analytics. Ramsay, a top blogger, has put up a detailed checklist of the essential blogging skills that you can check out.
What kind of pay can you expect?
Blogging.org found that hardly 2% of bloggers crack the dream blogging lifestyle.
Although the data is old, the blogging space has only gotten more competitive with the rise in content creation online.
So is blogging still a viable profession to live the nomadic lifestyle?
Absolutely!
Adam Enfroy recently started a blog and began making $17k per month in under 90 days.If he could do it, so can you, if you diversify your income sources.
Let’s talk about how to make it work…
How to get started with blogging?
Blogging remains a great way to build influence and document your life experiences. However, if you want to make a living from it, then you need to choose a niche and create content strategically.
You can’t rely on advertisements alone for monetizing your blog. To create a sustainable blog, you’ll likely need to top up Adsense income with other jobs from our list.
You can become an affiliate marketer, offer your consultation services and even sell your own products. In fact, two millionaire bloggers including Smart Blogger and Backlinko, have a major revenue stream selling their courses. Here’s the breakdown of the income sources of the top 1% bloggers as per an Authority Hacker research.
Ryan Robinson has put up a terrific guide with the 10 steps you need to take for starting a blog on the right foot.
5. Authority Site Builder/Affiliate Marketer
Tim Ferriss originally proposed the idea of the ‘new rich’ in his book ‘The Four Hour Workweek’. Do you know about the main revenue source that he said promised passive income? It was creating a blog and becoming an affiliate marketer promoting products in your niche.
Flash forward over a decade later and building authority sites is an accepted norm. It’s the go-to way for MANY internet marketers to make great income. It’s not uncommon for an affiliate marketer to even own multiple sites. For instance, Harsh Agrawal is known for his website Shout Me Loud. But he also runs other websites on WordPress, Shout Me Loud Hindi and the like.
An authority site is also a blog. However, the term revolves around the need for creating high-quality content and becoming an ‘authority’ in your niche. Mark and Gael breakdown what the definition of an authority site is like and more in a podcast episode below.
What skills do you need to learn?
The Authority Site Hacker believes that you need to develop four fundamental skills – Creation, Promotion, Engaging and Converting. However, each category of skill consists of lots of sub-skills and it can years to perfect each one of those.
What kind of pay can you expect?
As per the Authority Hackers research on money making blogging, here is the revenue breakdown and profit margin of various income streams. Remember to diversify your sources to climb up the revenue ladder.
How to get started with building an authority site?
The first stage of an authority site involves choosing a profitable niche that interests you. Perform keyword research to enable publishing about 50 affiliate articles (think product reviews, compilation of tools in your niche, and the like) and informational articles. Authority Hacker goes in detail about setting up an authority site here.
Want a detailed case study of growing a site? Then follow Tung Tran’s $10K challenge of building an authority site.
Final thoughts:
The benefits of blogging and its potential in terms of content marketing and branding, have been emphasised as a key tool in the growth and development of one’s own personal niche, as well as business related marketing. One can easily enhance their skills with the suggestions and increase their income opportunities.
What are you waiting for? Start Blogging! Let me know about your experience with blogging in the comment section below.
