We (my wife and I) have been digital nomads for the last 2 years. We run two websites that teach other people how to become financially free and become digital nomads. We love the freedom that being a digital nomad gives you. We have lived all over the USA over the last few years, basically moving to where we want to explore next. We have lived for months to years at a time in Oregon, Washington, Montana, California, Florida and New York.
Being in charge of your own financial destiny and building your own dream instead of someone else’s is a big benefit of being a digital nomad. One of the major benefits is that you get to spend a lot of time with your significant other. Because our schedules are so flexible, we can do activities together that we would normally be too busy for if we worked conventional jobs. The life of a digital nomad is truly amazing, and we would never give it up.
We rarely take vacations because our life style is a vacation! This does not mean that we don’t work, but we choose work that we love so it doesn’t feel like real work.
What is a Digital Nomad?
A digital nomad is anyone that can work remotely – they are not tied down to a specific work location. Sometimes they work for a company and sometimes they are self-employed (like us). The essence of being a digital nomad is freedom to work from anywhere.
The most common type of digital nomad is a self-employed internet marketer – we live to make money online and travel the world. There are also quite a few stock traders (e.g. professional stock and options trader Jeff Bishop) that trade stocks and travel all over the world. We supplement our income by trading stocks as well. We save a lot of time by following alerts from these swing trading signals services.
The process of becoming a digital nomad can be difficult. Leaving the security of a conventional job and a regular paycheck is a very difficult decision. This can be a major challenge for people to overcome. There is a lot of stress about being able to pay your bills or expenses until you build a significant income from your digital business. We have found that a good way to bridge the gap between employee and self-employed is to start a side hustle. There are plenty of courses that will teach you how to start different freelance business that you can do from home (e.g. Proofread Anywhere General Proofreading Course).
Interestingly, we have found that the amount of freedom that we have can be a double-edged sword. On one hand we love the freedom, but the deciding where to go next can be overwhelming! We have found ourselves drifting around never satisfied with a location. You could say we have become digital nomads accidentally!
Life is expensive when you are self-employed. Health insurance costs are very high and budgeting with an inconsistent income can be quite challenging. It costs a lot to have an account file your taxes because of all the different income streams and deductions that you can claim.
There is also the issue of frequently living in different states. Everything has to be changed if you stay in a state for more than a few months. Things like car registration, health insurance, registering your business and changing your address on everything. It can be quite the challenge!
A Typical Day as a Digital Nomad
I typically wake up at 6am to start working on our blogs. The work varies but it usually involves promoting our blogs on social media and working on new articles. Usually I discuss the planned work with our team of remote freelance writers. I spend several hours responding to emails, networking on Facebook blogging groups and improving our blog content.
By lunch time we go out to brunch, walk around a park and spend some quality time together. Sometimes we play pool or go into the city to explore. Often, we will make the most of the daylight hours to spend time outside and then continue work after it gets dark. Working online is a sedentary activity so we try to go to the gym daily.
I think that people assume it is a glamourous lifestyle where millionaire digital nomads blog from the pool in exotic tropical locations. My experience has been that this is generally not the case. Most digital nomads are extremely hard working, frugal and focused on building their business rather than constantly going on luxury vacations.
Many people think that digital nomads are all rich. My experience is that while some are wealthy, most value the freedom more than owning expensive things. This means that the majority live as cheaply as possible as they travel the globe.
It takes many years and lots of hard work for most people to become a digital nomad through internet marketing or blogging and it is far from glamourous. We work 100 hours a week and there is not always an immediate financial reward for the work. The work is often tedious and in the beginning you don’t really make any money.
You can read some of our old affiliate marketing income reports here. Our income since these were written has doubled and even tripled some months.
If you want to be a digital nomad, it is important to have substantial savings to help smooth out the inconsistent cash flow that most people experience. Get started as soon as possible with building online businesses, even if it means sacrificing your free time, because it takes a long time to build significant income from your online business.
I also suggest that you diversify your income streams as much as possible to help with cash flow and give yourself some protection in case one source dries up. We have dozens of different income sources online and we still worry that they might disappear!
Always strive to live below your means and reinvest your profits into growing your online business. We grew our business revenue 300% last year and we know some digital nomads that have experienced much larger growth by aggressively reinvesting their profits into the business.
Conclusion
Becoming a digital nomad is a dream life and it is within the reach of anyone that is willing to work hard and take some calculated risks. Maybe you will start sailing around the Bahamas or driving across America in an RV. Maybe you will fund your travel by working online as a stock trader or learn proofreading for bloggers as a way to make money online!
When you are a digital nomad you can choose the life that you want to live and live.
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