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Digital Nomad Tools and Tips

How to be a Digital Nomad with No Skills

When you are young, you like to think about what you want to be when you grow up. Not many people think of becoming a digital nomad.  However, when you recognize what the digital nomad life entails, it seems too good to be true. You are able to travel, explore new places, meet new people, and all while earning an income – it seems like a dream.

But how do people do it? Everyone has a skillset of sorts, but how do you narrow it down? Is it possible to be a digital nomad with no skills?

In this article, we will talk about how to be a digital nomad with no experience.

What does it mean to get a job as a digital nomad?

The traditional 9-5 job is becoming less expected of the younger generations. More and more companies allow their employees to work from home, while some companies are going completely remote. 

No matter your degree, or even if you have a degree, you can still be a digital nomad with no skills, or rather with skills you have but have not recognized yet.

Getting a job as a digital nomad allows you to set your own schedule and work when you want. Many nomads use this freedom to travel around and work from anywhere and everywhere!

As a digital nomad, you can work from a cafe, your home,
a co-working space, or even the beach!

Jobs | How to be a Digital Nomad without experience 

Online Teaching

Teaching English online is becoming more and more popular. Many companies do not require you to have a Bachelor’s degree; however, some will require it. If you are a native English speaker, you already have one of the most critical skills you need.

If you have a TEFL, you may have a few more options, but it is not necessary for teaching online.

Some popular online companies to work for are

  • VIPKID
  • PalFish
  • DaDaABC
  • And so many more!

Companies prefer teachers to teach around 15 hours a week, but you can always work more to earn extra cash. If you live or travel in a cheap country, you can live very comfortably with your salary. 

Online teaching is excellent because you set your hours and earn between $15 – $25 / hour. 

Online teaching classes can range from one-on-one tutoring
to classes of 4 students at the same time.

Administrative Assistant 

An administrative assistant involves helping a person or a business with all things administrative. These tasks can include basic data entry, answering emails, taking notes in meetings, maintaining contact lists, etc.

These are all tasks you have probably done once in your life and may seem ordinary, but by freeing up jobs like these for a company, you are making their lives much easier. You free up someone’s time to focus on other parts of their business. 

Copywriting

Copywriting is a great way to make cash as a digital nomad! Copywriting can include many forms of writing, such as writing copy for emails, marketing, landing pages for websites, and many more mediums.

There are blogging websites that you can sign up for and apply to write articles on various topics. Some websites will pay you per word or pay a flat fee for the article.

Social Media Manager

If you are obsessed with social media (like most of us), why not make some money from it? 

Engagement is vital on social media, so many of your tasks as a social media manager will be activities you are already doing. Projects can include commenting and engaging with followers and following relevant accounts on Instagram. The position can also include managing a Facebook group by accepting member requests and engaging with the community. These are just a couple of basic examples, but there is so much for a social media manager to do.

>>> MAKE SURE TO JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SUPPORT<<<

Social media platforms are user friendly, so if you use the platform from the consumer side, you will be able to manage one from the business side. 

Girl looking at an Instagram feed on her phone.
The impression a user’s Instagram feed gives is essential to
the brand – what does your Instagram say about you?

If you want to get more in-depth with social media management, you can take over managing the client’s accounts. This includes creating content for their social media channels, engaging in hashtag research to reach the right audience, scheduling the content, and helping them grow their business overall. These are all skills you can learn with practice, from a mentor, or easily learn from online courses or videos.  

Get our Social Media Guide KICKIN’ IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA if you want to get a headstart as a social media manager:

ebook cover Kickin It On Social Media Guide
The only guide you need for your online success!

Customer Support

Customer support jobs are some of the most common remote positions and always seem to be hiring. If you are good with people, companies will hire remote customer service workers to deal with customer questions or issues. 

Communication skills are essential for a role like this, along with general people skills. Communication is usually done through chat functions, email, or phone. This is an excellent job as a digital nomad, as your time zone could work ideally for covering all hours at a company that provides 24/7 support. 

Virtual Tutoring

If you have a skill that you excel at, teach others! You can teach a range of skills through Skype or other online video platforms. 

Some ideas of skills you could teach are playing an instrument, singing, drawing, even cooking!

Another great skill is to teach another language! English is the more common example to teach online, but if English is not your native language, there is most likely demand for people wanting to learn your mother tongue! You can teach anyone, anywhere in the world, and you are already an expert at it!

Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistants are becoming more popular and an excellent option for people starting out as a digital nomad. You can do so many tasks as a Virtual Assistant, many with skills you already have!

As mentioned before, administrative tasks and social media management are popular and can both be included in Virtual Assistant work. 

Other everyday tasks of a Virtual Assistant include but are not limited to

  • Email management
  • Website maintenance
  • Project management
  • Calendar management
  • Podcast management
  • Video editing

A great way to find Virtual Assistant clients is by joining Facebook groups dedicated to Virtual Assistants or Digital Nomads, as people will post projects and jobs that they are hiring for. 

Often, a company doesn’t know they need a Virtual Assistant, so it is up to you to sell yourself and let them know how you can make their work and life more manageable. 

Canva is a popular graphic design tool used by Virtual Assistants. 
Hint – if you need to make a resume, they have great resume templates!

Transcriptionist

Transcriptionist jobs are also another great role for new digital nomads. They might not be the most exciting online work, but there are plenty of positions available, and with time they pay well.  The job includes transcribing audio and video into text. All you need is a reliable internet connection and a computer to get started. You can work from the comfort of your own home and set your own work hours. This can also be done in multiple languages.

Graphic Design

Are you good at drawing or painting? Do you consider yourself to be artistic? Why not turn this passion into a business! 

Graphic designers are in high demand for online businesses. If you have an eye for aesthetics and design, you can help create branding for a company, including the logo, icons, website, colors, etc. 

There is a high demand for graphic designers, and there are numerous projects posted daily in Facebook groups.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been around for a while, and it is an easy way to make money. You earn a commission for promoting products and getting users to purchase them.  If you already have a following through a blog or social media, such as Pinterest or Instagram, this is a great way to earn extra income.  

You can learn more about affiliate marketing online if this is something you would be interested in.

How to find Digital Nomad Jobs

A few recommended remote job sites to look for jobs are

There are also freelancer websites where you can find more one-off jobs. You can create a profile and market yourself to potential customers. 

Next Steps

So, how to be a digital nomad with no skills? If none of the jobs listed in this article could work for you, you can develop your skills for the job you want! There are so many free or low-costing resources online to build your skills. Some great sites to check out are Udemy and Coursera, among plenty of others. 

There is so much you can learn and teach yourself from the comfort of your own home. So, if you want to be a digital nomad, there is really nothing stopping you! You either have the skill set and did not know it (until you read this article) or take the leap and teach yourself the skills you need. 

Your digital nomad journey awaits you!

Categories
Digital Nomad

A 13 Day Workation on the Atlantic with Nomad Cruise

When I started to write about my travels, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. While researching for articles about long-term travel, I eventually came across the term ‘digital nomads’. Here is a post on one of my first encounters with digital nomads. Today, one year after starting my blog, I find myself on a cruise ship with 200 digital nomads, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. This post is about why the Nomad Cruise event was not only an economically affordable and relaxing way to get from Colombia to Portugal, but also a very beneficial experience in terms of work.

Nomad Cruise made me go on a cruise ship...
Getting ready to board our home for the next 13 days…

The concept of digital nomadism

The concept of digital nomadism is straightforward. You earn your living online through remote work or freelancing jobs, travelling around the world as you go. Most digital nomads live outside of their home country for more than the half of the year, while others travel non-stop and have reached a location independent lifestyle with no fixed boundaries. The advanced version of a digital nomad is a location-independent entrepreneur. He/she runs an online business and manages it from anywhere in the world while being on workation. No wonder there was a huge demand for the Nomad Cruise event, as it’s just a smart way to combine transportation, work and vacation.

Two weeks of sunny days and ocean views from the poolside...not bad!
Our ‘living room’ for 13 days…

When I chose to leave my job in 2011 in order to see what else life would have to offer, I did not know about the option of becoming location independent or a digital nomad. It just so happened to work out that my skills as a PR/Marketing consultant are easily applied to remote work and freelance offers. In fact, I’m still amused by the fact that something that I started by accident, with no long-term intentions,  now has an official term that also defines a steady-growing crowd of people. I talked to many other digital nomads during the Nomad Cruise and they all confirmed the same: we all started our ‘thing’ and later found out about the concept.

Sunset talks in Cartagena's cruise ship port.
Last moments in Cartagena’s harbour before we set off for our journey.

After almost five years of traveling and working around the world, either solo or with my partner, the decision to group up and get to know other digital nomads was big. As much as I like the idea of individualism, and don’t usually tend to participate in group activities or tours, this cruise though sounded just too perfect to not join! The package included two weeks of workshops, networking, partying, relaxing at the pool while cruising towards Europe for less than the price of a flight ticket. If you have the time to jump on board, it’s definitely a great deal!

Being productive during our Nomad Cruise.
Getting some work done in one of the bars…I liked this one a lot because of the ocean view!

Life on a cruise ship – luckily we went with Nomad Cruise!

This was our first cruise, and it likely would have been a completely different experience if it weren’t for the other digital nomads on board. Cruise ship life is rather dull and follows a constant repetition of this pattern: eat, relax, eat, get entertained, eat, drink, sleep, repeat. Not that this would be the worst routine to follow, but I prefer to be a bit more self-directed and active on my vacation. But this was not a vacation for us! We travelled intensely over the previous 9 months, from Mexico to Ecuador all by bus. So, this cruise was a nice break from constant moving. We could simply sit back and relax! 🙂

Relaxing on the back deck of the ship.
One of my favourite spots: in the back of the ship there were usually few people and gorgeous views to enjoy the sunshine!

‘Workation’ on a Cruise Ship: the Nomad Cruise Program

Even though we enjoyed the relaxing part of cruise ship life, we were actually really grateful to get our main ‘entertainment’ from the many inspiring workshops, talks and networking events organised by the team of Nomad Cruise. There was a great deal of savvy entrepreneurs and freelancers amongst the participants who shared their knowledge and experiences on how they make it happen to work remotely while traveling the world.

Up to 4 Workshops per day kept us busy!
To inspire and help each other: great workshops filled our days with interesting content!

It was refreshing to be among other people who embrace the location independent lifestyle, and think in a different way. It became very obvious to me that this type of lifestyle has a huge potential to attract more and more people over time. I think, for most digital nomads on the cruise, that this lifestyle is not just a phase, but has become the reality that they will keep up for a very long time, possibly for the rest of their lives.
This became especially clear in some of the workshops with topics like starting a family and how to meet the right partner while traveling full-time. One great idea that excites me a lot emerged from one of the workshops: a world school for nomadic couples in order to make it possible for them to keep up with their lifestyle and provide the best education for their children. I really hope that we will see such an option in the future.

Just another inspiring workshop with fellow digital nomads.
We can’t complain: this setting probably turns any type of work into a very pleasant one!

In general, the workshops aimed to give solutions for the challenges digital nomads can relate to, are currently working on or may face in the future.

A few examples from the nomad cruise program:

  • How to run your business remotely from anywhere in the world
  • Fast Track Your Facebook PPC Success
  • Financial Planning for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs
  • Podcasting like a pro
  • Write Your How-To EBook in Two Days
  • Co-Living spaces and digital nomads – a love story

And then there were more abstract workshops where people came up with awesome ideas on how to solve some of the challenges nomads are facing, such as ‘How to keep your Flow’ or ‘Emotional Intelligence for Business and Personal Success’.

Nomad Cruise peeps all together
Last shots on the last evening!

To sum it up, the whole idea of meeting like-minded people and spending time together, while working on topics related to real-life situations, made this cruise absolutely worthwhile. Whoever wants to jump on the next nomad cruise, there will be one in September 2016. If you are interested in networking events for digital nomads, check out this post about ‘Events No Digital Nomad Should Miss In 2016’.

Excursion Day on St. Martin in the Caribbean

A cruise wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t get to hop off at an exotic island! On top of getting a lift from Colombia to Portugal, we stopped at the Caribbean island of St. Martin. It was a really nice break before continuing another 10 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean. We enjoyed a few hours of Internet in a café by the beach (yes, the digital nomad in me without internet on the ship really missed it in the beginning). After that, we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying our last dip in the Caribbean Sea. It was a perfect way to say goodbye to this part of the world.

My favourite place in the world...
Last dip in the Caribbean Sea: Will miss you wonderful water, you! 😀

Arrival in Lisbon

After 13 days of cruising, we couldn’t believe how quickly time had flown by. As early as 4:30 am on the 9th of June 2016, we crossed underneath the 25 de Abril Bridge to make our way to the harbour of Lisbon. We then had to wait another 2 ½ hours on the ship until we were able to disembark and set foot on European ground. We used the time to enjoy a final breakfast on the ship and take a few pictures in the morning sun. The skyline of the city was exciting to see after looking at the blue ocean for the past two weeks.

After two weeks of blue, Lisbon's houses looked even more beautiful to us!
On the 9th of June 2016, we arrived in Europe with the portuguese military lining up for us… :-O

Have you ever been to an event like this? How was your first experience on a cruise ship? Would you go again? If you liked this post, please comment below and share it with your friends! Happy travels y’all 😀

Workation on the Nomad Cruise.
If you liked this post pin it and save it for later!

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Destination Guides Digital Nomad

London and its Potential to Become a Digital Nomad Haven

Despite its ever-growing popularity in different parts of the globe, digital nomads are somewhat of a rare breed in London. Typically, this lifestyle involves travelling to cities or countries where the cost of living is relatively cheaper and the weather is comforting, for lack of a better term. A lot of millennial wanderers compile a list of places to visit – often ditching London because of the connotation of luxury and royalty. However, when it comes to a digital nomadic lifestyle, this European city offers a distinct vibe that highlights convenience and openness.

When travelling from city to city, everything begins and ends inside an airport. London, for one, is the proud home of a couple of major international runways that echo its thriving tourism and transportation sectors. Take Gatwick for instance. According to Panethos, this Crawley, West Sussex landing field has the world’s most active single-use runway and Europe’s leading airport for point-to-point flights. With the constant influx of passengers, airport management invested billions on upgrading its facilities from the inside out. Aside from having world-class amenities, Gatwick also improved its North Terminal, as well as South Terminal parking spaces. Parking4Less even points out an award winning short stay car park situated between the two terminals. In a nutshell, these developments are just the tip of the iceberg of London’s fantastic public transportation systems.

London by night.
Busy streets of London. Photo credit: pixabay.com

A digital nomad’s way of life revolves around the frequent use of public transportation, because they want to soak up the culture, socialize with locals, and more importantly travel around the city. London checks all of the above and more. The world-famous Tube is arguably the fastest and simplest way to travel around the city. In addition, there are local trains and trams, as well as an innovative Docklands Light Railway, that links various parts of the metropolitan. With this, digital nomads in London can drop off near Barbican Centre, where cafés such as TY Old Street and Look Mum No Hands have fast Internet connection.

Like hitting two birds with one stone, London buses offer not just cheap transportation alternatives but an excellent vantage point to see the many tourist spots en route. This iconic transportation system has stops near the city’s private workspaces along the lines of Campus London Café, Forge Co, and Somerset House, to name a few. While on the subject of touring, Visit London suggests River Bus Services as a terrific way to beat the traffic and get a distinct point of view for sightseeing.

Visiting London as a digital nomad can be a great option.
When in London, a visit to the ‘Big Ben’ is a must.

Additionally, during the summer months you’re likely to see digital nomads working on their laptops outside coffee shops, along the Camden Dock or even at some of London’s most revered parks. Famous meeting areas like Hyde Park often attract a montage of freelancers working for as long as their batteries hold out under the unrelenting sun.

All in all, London may not be the most popular destination for up-and-coming digital nomads, as it’s more suited for more experienced ones. The city, indeed, tends to fit the more seasoned batch of working travellers, but it’s not to say that people should count it out altogether. In fact, London can become one of the end goals, a target for a digital nomad to do better and aspire greater.

 

>>> THIS IS A THIRD-PARTY CONTENT<<<

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Digital Nomad

Six months, Six Countries with Terminal 3

There are more and more programs for aspiring and current digital nomads that make it easier to connect with like-minded people, and perhaps encourage new business opportunities. This is not only helpful, but also interesting, because it shows the increasing interest for this (still) newish lifestyle. We find it great and decided to present you with some of the programs that we will attend in 2016. After our last blog post ‘How to become a Digital Nomad with Programs like Terminal 3 and Nomad Cruise‘, many people responded and showed interest in the two programs that we mentioned, Terminal 3 and Nomad Cruise. Today, we will take a closer look at Terminal 3 in order to inspire some of you back home. So, read this post, sign up and/or share it with anyone you think might be interested in joining!

<<NEW>> Terminal 3 now accepts participants who can only join for 3 months!!! <<NEW>>

Let’s have a closer look and see what you can expect when you join Terminal 3. This program takes a group of digital nomads and startups to travel the world whilst working remotely. The six-month program starts in Budapest this July and ends in Indonesia in December. The six destinations are Budapest (Hungary), Rabat (Morocco), Berlin (Germany), Seoul (South Korea), Chang Mai (Thailand) and Bali (Indonesia). Terminal 3 organises all the logistics, including flights, accommodation, co-work space, travel insurance, language classes, yoga classes and a number of business and social events each month. You will have time to focus on your work and of course enjoy all  the fun things that come along with traveling. There will be more free time for you to explore each destination because you won’t have to worry about travel planning at all!

Enjoy a sunset without stressful travel planning in mind for the next day.
More time to gaze at the beautiful things in life: Travel carefree with Terminal 3.

Who is Terminal 3 For?

Terminal 3 is great if you want to, or are already, traveling and working around the world as a digital nomad, entrepreneur or if you have a startup. Basically, if you have a job that you can do in front of a computer from anywhere in the world, then Terminal 3 is for you! It is the perfect combination of work-life-balance within a community of fellow working professionals. We think this is helpful because programs like these not only help you to focus on your personal and professional development, but also open doors for new business opportunities. You never know, you might meet your next business partner or come up with a million-dollar-idea whilst brainstorming with others. The program includes mastermind groups, hack days and social impact events, so for sure you’ll learn something and get inspired.

In general, Terminal 3 is great for people who don’t really know yet how to get started with their remote lifestyle. It helps you kickstart your dream of traveling and working location-independently. Terminal 3 seeks to alleviate three main pain points of digital nomads: loneliness, lack of a community and stress-free remote work and travel. It’s all covered for you, while you sit back and relax and enjoy six months of traveling and working remotely in six different countries. In addition to regular get-togethers, social and business events and yes (what personally delights me) there are twice a week yoga and language classes! Yay, so you can stay fit and smart while you are traveling and it is all organized for you!

If this sounds interesting, then you’d better be quick and apply here before the 2nd of May 2016. Share this post if you liked it and if you can think of anyone who might be interested in joining us!