Home Digital Nomad 2.0: Managing Income

Digital Nomad 2.0: Managing Income

Do you know this simple yet effective exercise you can do right at your office desk? First off, stand up next to your chair. Then walk out of the office and never come back. Yes, a joke used to be a dream come true for most people working a 9 to 5. Here is digital nomad 2.0 — managing your income

All we want is to quit our office jobs and work remotely from a Balinese coffee shop — after mornings of surfing and drinking mango smoothies.

Well, everyone has had to go remote. As a result, many of those who dreamt of working from home are now caught up in an IDK-how-to-make-money situation.

The Big-Coronavirus-Remote-Work-Shift accelerated the digital nomad process.

Here is a digital nomad guide that will be useful for all the on-liners out there looking for career advice.

Let’s start from scratch. What is a digital nomad? It’s a person who works online while traveling. Wikipedia will give you a more detailed definition, but I will just say these people choose where they want to live and work for themselves.

Most go for an environment in which they’ll be able to earn enough to live a happy and healthy life. You can do it too, but on one condition.

If you want to join the ranks of digital nomads, you have to face the fact that, starting out, none of these jobs will likely be able to feed you for the rest of your life. Every year new technologies arise, tools change, and professions appear and disappear.

We have to embrace the spirit of our time with plasticity and readiness for changing professional careers. These remote jobs can be your e-business entry point and the way to earn your first money via the internet in the nearest future or even today.

Copywriting

Do you post your photos on Insta or write articles for a blog? Congratulations, you are already a content creator. Almost anyone can become a copywriter, that is, the author of advertising and other marketing texts.

At first, the revenues will be small, and the competition will be very fierce. Putting together a portfolio is an essential step towards making good money by copywriting. To get there, you will have to work either for small fees or even for recommendations from your customers. Advice from your customers is standard practice for those looking to start copywriting.

After you create a portfolio, you can contact a successful content project that makes money on advertising. 

For instance, AdMe posts captivating content that everyone wants to share. Google pays a small penny for each click. If you write for this website and gain a lot of readers, a penny might grow into $100 or even $1,000.

If you want to try your hand now, then head to www.freelancer.com or www.upwork.com to check out freelance copywriting jobs.

Vlogging

We know how you hate these talking heads who get paid for doing nothing. But haven’t you dreamt of becoming a famous vlogger and collaborating with big-name brands? You can do it in 3 steps: start your own YouTube channel, tell the world about a popular product, and post a link to an affiliate sales page. 

What can you earn in your channel’s early days?

Not much. Especially with CPC (cost per click) ads. But you’ll soon gaina broad audience if you opt for a hot niche like lifehacks, celebrity gossip, top lists, fails or food reviews.

Of course, first, you need to study the top competitors and follow their example for some time without trying to stand out. It’s totally ok to do something that someone has already done before unless you are a celebrity with millions of followers.

Also, you should always be careful about what you say as good reputations are tough to build but easy to lose.

You probably know YouTubers get between $0.10 to $0.30 per view, and ads by top vloggers are costly. For example, with 100,000 subscribers, you can sell a 10-second native ad at the beginning of your video and make a good living.

Besides, this online business is easy to run automatically. With that said, of course, the process of making videos takes a lot of time.

SMM Marketing

Do you feel like browsing social media 24/7? Time to make money doing it. It’s OK if you aren’t good at posting cute pics on Insta.

With SMM courses, you will learn how to develop a promotion strategy, communicate with your audience, create content, and customize targeted advertising.

You can go for a fixed price or get hourly wages. Currently, there are 3,757 Social Media Marketing jobs on Upwork to choose from.

The downside of it is that SMM is time-consuming and takes due diligence. You’re not going to see results immediately. You will only start viewing progress after a certain time – usually after at least 3 to 6 months. And, yes, the SMM boom is long over, so the wages aren’t that great. 

Affiliate Marketing  

We have already touched on vlogging, so you know there are many affiliate programs to choose from. The market is really huge and still growing. According to a Statista report, spending on affiliate marketing in the U.S. was predicted to reach $8.2 billion by 2022.

Generally, earnings in this sphere range from 1 to 50% of the expenses of the referral you shared via link or are made on a commission of the service cost.

Don’t worry; you aren’t taking money from your friend’s pocket. It’s royalty from owners of the service who share it with you for attracting new customers to their business. Companies receive new users, and their partners receive income from each attracted client, making such cooperation beneficial for both parties.

Naturally, earnings begin only when a new referral buys something in the online store like iHerb or makes purchases on platforms like Airbnb and Dropbox. 

Traffic Arbitrage

Traffic arbitrage is a subset of affiliate marketing. The basic idea behind it is very simple to understand: a media buyer buys traffic on one platform and sells it on another, redirecting visitors from website A to website B.

There are a lot of traffic sources: search results, directories, messengers, ad boards, email newsletters, social networks, and links in articles. The owner of any resource can earn. The principle here is the same: buy low, sell high.

Sounds like a no-brainer. However, you can’t do this without investing in advertising.

There are free sources of traffic, but it’s tough to make money on them. Your success in this sphere depends on several factors: you’ll have to get good at generating, setting up, and running creative ads. You have to memorize a bunch of information and perform the same actions over and over again.

All of the actions are fine and will suit you if you are ok with repetition and have a decent starting budget.

Online Recruiting

Are you a people person? Then online recruiting may be the right path for you. Digital HR careers are developing very fast, and the good news is that this niche is almost empty right now.

Of course, hiring high-profile specialists isn’t something you can just learn how to do in a month or two. But you can become the kind of a virtual recruiter to find a customer support specialist with a $15 hourly wage. 

The internet is full of online tools and strategies to recruit on the cheap. There are even specialized automated online recruitment systems that store and maintain databases of resumes and vacancies and integrate with job sites.

Take your chance if you are ready to change people’s lives by helping them find a dream job. Someday you might even catalyze the success of a big company by filling a key position with a high-end professional.

Cryptocurrency Trading

Remember the story about a guy who bought a pizza for 10,000 Bitcoins? Today he would have owned approximately $101 million.

You can still hop on the crypto train to make money trading BTC and altcoins. It is impossible to earn on cryptocurrency without tools. To make the crypto-capital work, a trader will need to register on exchanges and trading platforms. 

To build up your skills before spilling your cash, consider the exchanges that have demo accounts. In crypto, demo mode is an opportunity to try trading in the real market. Crypto demo modes are a great tool to test strategies and understand how traders behave.

After you practice trading at an amateur level and know all the ins and outs, you can choose from a variety of vacancies where you will not only be able to make a profit from price fluctuations but will also get paid for your expertise.

How not to Become a Digital Tramp

Now that you’re all set, the first advice would be this: it’s better not to rush but to start smoothly. Take a little bit of time and work on this as a side-hustle for a while to make sure you like it.

For obvious reasons, we are all anxious to travel and start new things ASAP. Of course, we all want to travel right now because of the lengthy lockdown and all those YouTube videos about how guys leave the office and become freelancers chilling on white sand with a laptop.

Nevertheless, there is more to it than just a daydream. You need to plan well if you want to have a successful nomadic future.

First off, talk to your employer about working remotely after the quarantine. If you get a refusal, you should keep your office salary and start doing some freelance things on the side.

Only when your outside income outgrows your salary should you leave your day job. Be brave and flexible, try whatever sparks your interest, and always plan ahead.

Image Credit: Andrea Piacquidio; Pexels

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