The Internet has created a great many career and entertainment opportunities for millions of people, but the world of the digital nomad has to be among the most interesting. Being a digital nomad means traveling the world while working, but there is also a cottage industry that has grown up around following the exploits of digital nomads as well.
As of August 2018, nearly five million people consider themselves to be digital nomads, while millions more follow the exploits of those nomads closely. A digital nomad is someone who works online jobs while living in different parts of the world. Many people follow these nomads because of their fascinating lives, but becoming a digital nomad is not nearly as easy as people think it is.
Find Work
The ability to find work online has been around almost as long as the Internet. There are marketplaces where freelancers can go to bid for jobs and make important contacts. The first step in your transition to becoming a digital nomad is to decide what types of work you would want to take. Graphic design, copywriting, and website development are just three of the many types of jobs you can work to make a good living.
One of the reasons being a digital nomad works is because the more successful nomads tend to go to places where making a standard American income will go a very long way. There have even been small nomad communities spring up in countries where nomads tend to gravitate, which makes finding a place to live much easier.
Plan Your Journey
For some nomads, the journey itself is what keeps them employed. Many nomads run blogs and do fundraisers that keep them on the road and reporting their experiences. If you are going to survive for at least a year as a nomad, it is important to plan your journey and leave very little to chance. As you gain experience, you can start to follow your instincts and visit places you have always wanted to visit. But in that first year, planning is very important.
Most nomads avoid hotels or other standard forms of lodging. Instead, they find themselves in communes, or communities developed specifically for nomads. Before you decide to start working remote, you should develop a one-year itinerary that will keep you on the road but headed to anticipated destinations.
Choose Your Comfort Level
There is a couple of digital nomads who write a blog about their adventures living on a boat that travels from country to country. Being a world-traveling writer does not mean that you have to sleep in tents or abandoned buildings. Sometimes that remote job of yours can be done by living in rented RVs, or finding other unique types of accommodations that will make your writing more interesting.
Get a Virtual Mailbox
Most nomads like to have a way that they can reliably get mail but still enjoy life out in the wide-open world. A virtual mailbox is an excellent solution for the world traveler who does not want to live at a fixed address.
With a virtual mailbox, you will have an address where you can get all of your important correspondence and possibly be informed of new opportunities. Your mailbox service will send you scans of your mail and you decide whether to have the mail shredded, held, or forwarded to you. No matter where you are in the world, you will have a stable mailing address you can use for a variety of important tasks.
Collect Your Nomad Tools
A good digital nomad is not afraid to check out and utilize the latest mobile production tools. To be successful in this type of work, you will need strong communication tools such as a good smartphone and maybe even a tablet. You will need navigational apps, and you will also need plenty of ways to organize your plans and your work. When you rely on technology for everything from your income to your living arrangements, it is essential to have the latest and best technological tools at your disposal.
Never Stop Learning
The idea of being someone who makes a living traveling the world can sound great, but there are a lot of obstacles that must be overcome. Each country has their own traveling laws, and you could find yourself in situations where your lifestyle makes you a target for criminals both online and offline. As you go from adventure to adventure, it is critical that you take in information and learn new ways to make your adventures safer and more productive.
Being a digital nomad is probably not as glamorous as it sounds, and it can be a difficult way to make a living. But as more and more people start to discover how technology allows us to break chains that had been in place for years, some people are jumping right into a lifestyle that has been created and perpetuated online.
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