DISCLAIMER: A lot of people will give you scrappy ways to try and piece together enough money to survive. If you want to LIVE as a digital nomad, and travel wherever you want, whenever you want, then you need a real career. I’ve been traveling full time since July 2014 and just published a tell all on How to Make Money While Traveling the World
I’ll tl:dr the jobs for you here, but if you don’t take the steps that I outline in the full post first, it’s still going to seem impossible, so I recommend the full read.
Here are some great jobs to make money while traveling the world:
Graphic Designer (commercial/advertising)
Video Animator / Editor (commercial/advertising) — Note that internet cost and speed will become a deciding factor in where you can travel. See my frequently updated list of cities with great internet connection around the world.
Digital Media Buyer: Facebook Ads
Digital Media Buyer: Search Ads
SEO Specialist
UX Designer
Website Developer
Software Engineer
Mobile App Developer
Copywriter (commercial/advertising)
Brand Owner — Drop shipping with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) — This is tough, but I have friends who’ve been extremely successful in this area.
Here are some jobs that sound great, but are extremely hard to be successful in making money while traveling the world:
Photographer — Sales is difficult.
Journalist — Sales is difficult.
Travel Writer — Sales is difficult.
Sales Professional — This can be done (I did it for a while), but it is difficult to never have face time with prospects and clients, or attending industry events.
Affiliate Marketing — You risk your own capital.
Teach English — A good option, but you’re bound to one location to build a network, or teach at a school. You can travel, but your life isn’t fully your own.
Advertising on a Travel Blog — You’ll need about 2,000,000 page views per month to make enough money…and that’s a TON of visitors (nearly impossible).
Saving Money in Advance — Of course this must be done to build a cushion, and you should already consider “spending money on experiences instead of things”, but you can’t travel forever on savings.
Brand Ambassador / Brand Promotions — They don’t pay much, you need to be famous to make this a reality.
Social Media Manager — You need to be able to respond in a crisis, this can be a point of failure for if you’re on a 14 hour flight.