You want to know how to make money while traveling the world?

Well, if you want to travel the world, you’ll eventually have to know how to make money while traveling. While travel can be damn cheap, it still isn’t technically free. While it’s increasingly doable to travel on $10 or $20 a day… you still need that $10 or $20 a day!

This. Is. A. Fact.

This is why I created The Two Nomad Commandments (aka how to travel for free). Having visited thirty-ish countries in the past few years (living and working in three), I’ve mastered the art of budget travel and created The Two Nomad Commandments to simplify budget travel and explain exactly how long term travel is accomplished.

If you want to travel for a long f**king time, you must do TWO things.

1. Lower the Cost of Travel
2. Create Income to Sustain Travels

Easy as that.

#1 Lowering the cost of travel + #2 Creating income to sustain travels = you can literally travel for as long as you f**king want to. It’s basic math.

But you can’t just master one of the commandments. You have to master both. The commandments compliment and live in unison with each other. You need both.

You might be a master of saving money on travel, but if you don’t ever learn how to make money while traveling, your travels are going to eventually end. Vice versa.

Now, when it comes to budget travel, saving money while on the road is pretty straightforward.

You know the drill.  Stay in hostels. Eat street food. Hack miles if you can. Take the local buses. We get it. It’s all been done. It’s all over the internet. Every travel blogger in the world has twenty blog posts chiming in on the same travel hacking stuff over and over again (myself included).

And for good reason – it all works! There is a universe worth of information on the web about how to cut the cost of travel. All of the tips and tricks are tested, tried and true. We recommend staying in hostels, eating street food, hacking points and taking local buses because… it f**king works!

But! When it comes to how to make money while traveling… there seems to be a lot less innovation.

Maybe you’ve seen the lists. “62 jobs for travelers!” “101 ways to make money on the road!” or some other click-bait list aimed at aspiring travelers that ultimately accomplishes nothing.

When it comes to learning how to make money while traveling… it’s all kind of the same. A lot of people talk about how to travel the world and cut costs, but there hasn’t been quite the same amount of attention for how to make money while traveling.

Right now if you want to make money while traveling, the story usually goes something like this…

“Oh, start a blog! But it’ll take a while, so maybe teach English in the meantime? Or work on a cruise ship! Or one time I read that some dude in Peru was teaching yoga…. or was it surfing … Did I mention you should teach English?”

This is all fine and dandy, and they work! I’ve taught English. I make money with my blog. I’ve looked at work on cruise ships, resorts, and everything in between. but I want more.

I have ideas. I have experiments I want to test.

I think there are untapped ways that travelers can make money, and I want to really dive deep and toy around with a few of the ideas I’ve had. You might not be interested in making money online. Hopefully you are! But if you are you have to realize it takes time, sometimes years!

So what options are available to travelers while on the road? Can they utilize their skills and resources to create income?

That’s exactly I’m going to find out…

Meet Nomad Income Hacks

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Nomad Income Hacks (aka my experiments creating income while traveling)

Let’s cut to a point real quick – I haven’t tested any of my Nomad Income Hacks… yet.

I’m currently living in Hong Kong, teaching English to pay the bills, working my ass off on Nomads Nation, and preparing to put my theories to the test.

I’m headed to Mexico in July, where my dozens of pages of notes, strategies, ideas and theories will be put to the test. It’s a make or break. Even if you don’t want me to succeed, you should follow along just to see me fail 😉

Why Nomad Income Hacks? What the hell are these catchy sounding things?

I believe in this day and age we have the ability to create income anywhere in the world. Nomad Income Hacks will reflect this belief.

Based on my research, time on the road, and personal experiences, I strongly believe there are a handful of guaranteed ways travelers can use to make money most anywhere in the world.

I thought about keeping them a secret, but f**k that. I’m going to give them a shot, and if someone reads this and can do a better job than me, I embrace it. Let the games begin!

Nomad Income Hacks are going to be a proven system that leverage your personal skills, the global internet, and the Hostel Economy to make money anywhere while traveling.

Intriguing right? Let’s dissect. There are some crucial points that will make or Nomad Income Hacks.

1. The work has to be low in hours and high in pay. Travelers can be willing to work long hours for too little pay (see; bartending for ten bucks and a few free after hours beers). No one is going to get excited about a system that teaches them how to make $20 for 10 hours of work.
2. These sources of income need to be easy to obtain. If a particular Hack took a year to see results, you’d be better off building an online source of income which would enable you to make money anywhere with a Wifi connection.
3. It needs to be replicable. There’s no point in me documenting ways to make money with esoteric talents. The Hacks need to be actionable, and easy to replicate.
4. I must be thorough in my documentation of Nomad Income Hacks. If my goal is easy replicability, then the best way to do so is to track everything I do, everything and most importantly, everything I make. The more I track, the better I can fine tune, the more people that will be able to succeed implementing what I’ve tested.

There are also some things that I suspect will be crucial, but won’t know until I actually test them out.

1. I believe Nomad Income Hacks will better benefit the slow traveler. It will enable Nomads to get their feet on the ground. Sure, a new city a day can be fun, but it’ll compromise your ability to find work. I think I’ll fail a s**t load of times before succeeding, and picking up camp and relocating every few days is not going to help that.
2. I think I can run all of my tests simultaneously. My initial plan was to pick one Nomad Income Hack and perfect it. But I’ve come to the realization that it’s more than likely that some Hacks will fail. By testing all of the Hacks simultaneously, I can weed out where I was right, and where I was a dumb ass.

There are also a few things I’m looking to prove

1. Nomad Income Hacks are ways to make money without prejudice. By relying on The Hostel Economy, you can ensure that while you might be in an area prejudiced against your skin color, sexual orientation, or anything else – The Hostel Economy is a group of the most open minded people in the world.
2. That the skills can be learned. I am not going to test my ability to make money as a singer (not that I can sing for shit). But singing is a natural talent. I want to test services that people can learn – in particular I’m intrigued by cutting hair and instructing Yoga.
3. While it will help, and be a part of Nomad Income Hacks, you will not need an internet connection.
4. That Nomad Income Hacks can help you learn how make money while traveling and benefit your brand, most specifically a blog. By meeting other travelers and offering services, you are given the rare opportunity to make professional connection which will directly benefit your brand/blog. (Think face to face interactions which benefit in long term connections/visitors to your site).

And finally, I’m specifically going to be testing out three different Hacks.

1. Locating hostels without a ‘free walking tour’ service, or hostels that have opportunity for more ‘free walking tours’. I will then pitch hostels on me creating tours for them – all based on the internationl phenomenon ‘Free Walking Tours’. I’ll run a similar business model, offering well organized, free tours, that are profitable through tips.
2. Teaching English. I have a defined strategy for how to obtain work as a traveling English teacher.
3. Personal services – Cutting hair and yoga at the moment. Offering these services in hostels, and
4. My secret weapon. Can’t say anymore than that.

The heart of this plan revolves around what I am currently dubbing The Hostel Economy. I’m debating whether The Nomad Economy is better, but I am also very well aware I’m a bit too in love with the word ‘nomad’, so for now, I’m sticking with The Hostel Economy.

The Hostel Economy

The centerpiece of my experiments with innovating how to make money while traveling will revolve around hostels.

It’s no secret that the hostel is the beating heart of the backpacker universe. If you’ve traveled independently, you’ve stayed in hostels, made friends, got wasted, and had experiences of a lifetime with people you’ll never forget.

It’s also no secret that simply by asking around, backpackers can pick up work at hostels! Typically the work is unpaid and unglamorous (aka bartending or working the graveyard admin shift), but you’ll score a free dorm bed and maybe some breakfast (aka watered down coffee and cardboard flavored toast).

I’ve seen it done a million times.

And I think more can be done with it.

The centerpiece of Nomad Income Hacks will be The Hostel Economy.

In Conclusion

So. That’s it. Like I said, this is all up in the air. Subscribe below to watch if I sink or swim. Regardless, I’m gunna try.

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