Work From Anywhere! - A Guide to Finding a Job You Can Take On the Road!
“How do you make money on the road while traveling?” Some variation of those words flash across our screen almost daily. It is our number one most asked question, by far. I think we are in a good position to answer that question because, admittedly, we have tried it all. We know what works and what doesn’t. After four years of constantly trying new things to see what is legit, and what isn’t, we are probably experts at this point. With all of that said, here are some remote, “travel friendly” work opportunities that we’ve found can be done wherever you go in your journey. In the great words of Fifth Harmony, “you don’t gotta go to work work work work work, you can work from home.”
Gig Work –
This includes things like Doordash, Instacart (If you sign up, here is my referral code - AMMASH95109) Uber, and the many other options that are out there! This can be a great option that is flexible and allows you to work on your own schedule. It pays decent too and was a great source of income for us when we first got on the road. I always recommend this to people first starting out as a way to get on the road and have something while they figure out something that works for them. The biggest and only downside to doing this is it really depends on the location you are in. Some areas you can make really good money, others not so much. Doing this also means that you will have to stick to more populated areas so you will likely have to stay in campgrounds and that will cost additional money. That is the reason we don’t do this so much anymore. We prefer to boondock and that means staying in more desolate areas where people likely will not be wanting to Doordash food or order groceries.
Remote Jobs –
This is a more stable option when it comes to having a sustainable and predictable income. Some downsides to choosing this option is it can be hard to know which opportunities are legit and navigating this space can sometimes feel like the wild west, but more on that later. Also, you will likely have a set schedule so it can make traveling more tricky, but it is totally doable. Some sites that you can find remote work on are:
· Upwork - This one does have quite a few scams on it, but I included it here because there are some good legit opportunities too. Just be careful about the information you give out.
Offer a service –
Do you already have a skill that you can take with you on the road? That was the case for me having been a hairdresser before we left to hit the road. It was a great option for us because I could offer haircuts right from our RV and people loved the convenience of having someone in the RV park that offered a service they needed. Something about the RV community is we are always more willing to help out a fellow RVer than a big corporation. The only down side to this option is similar to gig work, you have to be somewhere populated with a lot of people to offer your service to. I did this in Florida in the winter and made more than I did working in the salon! It was amazing, but once summer hit and everyone dispersed, there went all my clients. It can be great, but there is a bit of a location and timing exclusion with this.
Workamping –
We have some experience with this when we did the Beet Harvest in Michigan. They will give you a spot to park your RV for free and pay pretty well. It is almost always temporary but can pay enough to fund your travels until the next workamping gig comes along.
Start your own business –
This has endless options, but I will cover all the ones I know off hand, or what we have personally tried.
· Selling on Amazon - For a while we sold products on Amazon and made pretty good money doing it. The short and sweet version of how we did it was we would source products that were on clearance at big name stores, scan them using the amazon seller app, and if they were selling for more on Amazon we would package them up and ship them into an Amazon fulfillment center where they would fulfill and ship any and all orders that came in so we never had to worry about any of that, we would just check the app and see the profits coming in. The downside is it does require some upfront cost to source the items and you have to be good at finding and scoring the best deals.
· Start an Etsy shop – There are so many ways you can do this without needing to be good at making things of having physical products to sell. So many people sell digital products and printables, also print on demand services allow you to design many products and you can link the site with Etsy and they will fulfill all your orders for you without ever having to deal with a physical product!
· Dropshipping – You can create a Shopify store and source products from Salehoo and mark them up in your shop to sell. This can be a more passive source of income once it is all set up and can be a great option for someone looking to travel and not have to spend a lot of time working.
Some things to watch out for when looking for remote work!!
· Anyone who makes outrageous claims of large amounts of money made that seem too good to be true – chances are they are not being honest with this and are trying to convince you to sign up for something that will not yield you the results they are claiming it will, but will instead make them money, and you will lose money.
· Anyone who says they have found the “secret” to making money and is trying to sell you some type of course. They are just trying to sell you the course and that is how they are making their money. Often, these “courses” are exorbitantly overpriced and do not contain any valuable information that you couldn’t find on YouTube for free. Or they offer a “smaller” course for less, and then upsell the bigger course that is supposed to contain all the “real” secrets. They charge thousands for the larger course even though they have zero credentials whatsoever or any real credibility. I have recently seen this all over the place and feel bad for all the people who will be scammed out of their money while believing they will be able to have financial freedom. Truth be told, I don’t know how the people who do this to people sleep at night knowing they are lying to and swindling innocent people. I recently saw someone shilling her course and her “credibility” is that she grew her social media by the hundreds of thousands herself, but if you scroll back on her page, it is obvious she bought the account and the posts were not even her. My only hope is that people find this blog and read this first.
· A good rule of thumb when navigating this space is, if someone is trying to get you to join them, sign up for something, buy a course, making outrageous too good to be true claims, want you to spend a bunch of money to do it, RUN! If they were truly making great money from what they were doing, there would be no need to aggressively recruit others, sell a course, etc. They are not benevolent souls who just want to help, or they would offer the information for free like so many do on YouTube and other sites. Why charge for the info if what they’re already doing is so unbelievably profitable? It makes absolutely no sense. They are making money off the backs of innocent people by scamming them. I promise you, it is not worth it. You will waste your time and lose money lining their pockets. It’s sad that we live in a world where this section is even necessary in this post, but it may be the most important section. If for no other reason other than to get the word out and help prevent innocent people from getting swindled out of their hard earned money, please share this.
If you have any other options that I may have missed, please list them in the comments!
Lets make this a resource for people looking to break out of their current situation and try something new!
