It’s no secret that we love our job. starting our blog and becoming digital nomads was the best decision we’ve ever made. We love it so much that our goal in life is now to get a lot more people to start their own blogs, find remote work and travel a lot more often.
But, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. We have many articles on this web site that show the positive side of online work, but there are some cons as well. In my opinion, the upsides far outweigh the downsides!
In this post, I’m going to share with you the pros and cons of being a full-time remote working digital nomad. I hope that after you read this, you’ll have a a lot more honest, transparent picture of what remote work may look like for you.
Firstly, What defines a digital Nomad?
Basically, a digital nomad is someone who uses technology, namely the internet, to earn money online while having the freedom to travel and live anywhere in the world. This basic definition is normally enough to convince someone to get into this lifestyle.
What could be better? working when you want. choosing your own hours. working for yourself. working from anywhere in the world. Making good money. Being free.
It all sounds so great, and believe me… it is.
Our digital nomad life revolves around our blog. We started this blog in 2012 and after about a year it started earning a bit of money. After less than 2 years it was earning enough to pay for our travels and today the blog is earning nearly quadruple what our well-paying jobs in Canada ever did.
We chose the blogging route, but there are literally hundreds of travel jobs and even a lot more remote jobs that you can find. If you don’t take pleasure in writing, taking photos and sharing things online, there are plenty of other ways to make money on the road.
As long as you’re utilizing the world large web to make a living while travelling and living around the world, you’re technically a digital nomad.
SEE ALSO: 10 steps To help You prosper As a digital Nomad
The Pros Of digital Nomad Life
I have to tell you, the pros of digital nomad life are far much easier to write than the cons. This post might sound like I’m biased. As if I’m trying to sell you a timeshare and in doing so, I make the pros sound so much better than the cons, but in my experience, this is the truth.
Had Dariece and I not pivoted our life and taken this path towards location independence and financial freedom, I don’t think we would have ever been so happy. Of course, my opinion is biased! I’m a digital nomad myself and the Internet generally saved my life. I went from working 12 hours/week, in a dark factory earning $30 / hour, to working in my pyjamas in a beach rental property for 15 hours per week, and feeling financially free.
Yes. It’s easy for me to think of the positive aspects of digital nomad life because to me, it’s the best lifestyle I can imagine.
You Can have The freedom To work From Anywhere (with Wi-Fi)
Also known as “location independence”, this freedom indicates everything to a digital nomad. The Internet has changed the landscape of the workplace so much so that your workplace no longer has to be a particular place at all. Today, your office can be from a surfing village in Bali, a mountain town in Nepal or white wine country in Italy.
The freedom to work from anywhere is the core of what makes location independence so great.
Our offices have been beautiful pool villas in Indonesia, beach huts in Thailand, volcano craters in Guatemala, a seaside house in the Caribbean, co-working spaces in Bali, a city apartment or condo in Malta and lots of more. We’ve created our own home offices in a lot more places than we can count and each of them was unique.
By working in so lots of different environments, we’re able to keep our time on the computer fresh and fun. It never seems to get boring. When your coffee break can be spent kayaking in a volcanic lake one day and surfing the waves of Canggu the next, your job just never seems to get old.
Find an office space that works for you
I know I’m already writing this like a salesman. As if I’m trying to convince you of something. but in reality, this feeling of freedom is indescribable. It’s great. The funny thing is that as I’m typing this now I’m looking out over the sea from my outside office in Grenada and thinking about how fortunate I feel.
For a travel-lover like myself, the freedom to work from anywhere in the world is the utmost pro to this lifestyle.
SEE ALSO: 7 best jobs For digital Nomads – get Paid With These top Careers
YouCan choose Your own Hours
When I worked in Canada as a printing press operator, my hours were made a decision by the company. I had to work morning shift one week, afternoons the next and graveyards whenever there was extra work to be done. Studies have shown that nightshifts can literally take years off of your life and whenever I changed shifts I felt exhausted and drained.
I remember dreading Sundays because I knew that I was going to have to wake up on Monday at 5:00 am to make it to work on time. While I was at work I would enjoy the clock and tick each minute down, ecstatic to rush home to see Dariece.
Now we sleep in until we feel like waking up. We start the morning slow with a coffee and a walk. When we make it to the computer, that’s when our shift starts. Whenever we want. We work side by side and the minute I find myself checking out the clock, I get off the computer. At that point, I’m not being as productive as I could be, so instead of wasting time being unfocused, we close up the laptops and go out to do something.
This freedom to choose my own work hours has not only made me feel less stressed out, but it’s also made me healthier, closer with Dariece and ultimately much, much happier.
Working when you want doesn’t indicate that you never do any work. I’ve found that now that I’m working for myself, I actually want to work. Every minute I put into our blog and online services is another step up in our entrepreneurial journey. for every hour I put in, I’m paid off in income, growth and fulfillment.
Not only do we get to bid farewell to the scheduled 9-5 work hours, but we’re also able to have as lots of holidays as we want. When we worked in Canada we were limited to just 2 – 3 weeks of holidays per year (I had 2 weeks, Dariece had 3). This indicated that we didn’t have enough time to really experience any country. We could go on a holiday, but we didn’t have enough time to travel and really get underneath the skin of any place we visited.
Being able to go on holiday for as long as you want, whenever you want is one of the greatest things about working for yourself, working online and having location independence.
The Pay is Good!
This is where so lots of people get confused. For some reason, when a lot of people think of blogging as an occupation, they picture a broke backpacker working from the beach to earn a few hundred dollars a month — just enough to pay for surfboard wax and a hamburger. but that’s not the case anymore.
These days, bloggers, remote workers and web entrepreneurs are some of the wealthiest people in the workforce. go to a remote working hub like Bali, Chiang Mai or Lisbon and meet a few people there. 10 years ago you would have met a bunch of destitute travellers scraping by on $5 per day, trying to save enough for a flight home, but today these places have boomed as digital nomad hot spots and the financial demographic has shifted.
The age groups are relatively the same and the way they dress hasn’t changed all that much, but these days there are hundreds, if not thousands of millionaires in their midst. Some made it big on Bitcoin, others started a successful dropshipping company, while lots of of them have built a blog empire that now earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Yes, there is a lot more competition to prosper online than there was 10 years ago, but today there is much a lot more opportunity.
That’s why places like Canggu, Chiang Mai and Lisbon are thriving with this type of work. lots of governments have seen such an influx of remote workers that they’ve had to change their immigration policies to accommodate the number of people who are coming into their borders with a full-time remote income.
Having financial freedom, paired with the freedom to work from anywhere and choose your own hours is the bedrock of what makes digital nomad life so amazing. This is the trifecta of remote work and when you have all three, you’ll likely be singing its praises as I am in this article.
SEE ALSO: Our journey To A Six-Figure online Business
You Can earn money While You Sleep
While financial freedom is great, it’s even better when you complimentary up your time so you can do whatever you want, while still earning a living. Passive income isn’t possible with all types of remote jobs, but one of the best ways to build up a good amount of passive income is through blogging.
By simply growing your traffic to a certain level, you can turn on ads on your pages (like the ads you see on this page) and they can earn passive income. once you flick that switch and turn on ads, you’ll be earning money while you sleep. The ads you see on the pages on this sitecurrently bring in around $4,000 / month, and we hardly have any turned on because we value the user experience so much. We don’t want to annoy you with ads and force you to click away!
We know of some other bloggers who turn on a lot more ads, but have less traffic than us and still make a lot a lot more money from the ads.
But ads are just one way that you can bring in a passive income. affiliate sales, product sales and email marketing are just a few ways that you can work hard now and then reap the benefits later. This is a passive (or deferred) income method and it’s one of the best parts about running your own online business.
The best part of running your own service and working online is that you can stop trading dollars for hours. When you start earning money through your own channels, you’ll start seeing the standard method of hourly pay and salary to be slightly primitive and old-fashioned. With the Internet and a lot of forms of remote work, you can make your money work for you.
Now you can set something up that can run automatically and generate income for you long term. Take for example a blog post that ranks well in Google. After you publish that post, you can forget about it, but it can continuously earn you money through affiliate sales, product sales and advertising. This is known as passive income and it’s something that the Internet has made a lot more attainable than ever before.
You Can help Others
Depending on what remote job you go for, you may find that you’re able to help people. money and freedom are great perks of this job, but there is nothing a lot more satisfying than knowing that you’re having an impact on the world.
If you’re teaching English online, you may find that you’re giving young people in developing countries a brighter future. If you’re working in tourism you might be able to show people how to make the most of their holiday, and if you have a blog you can help people do whatever they want. You can give them a lot more confidence, show them how to build things, show them about tech, help them be better parents, show them how to make money online… the list goes on and on.
The paycheck that we get from this blog is great, but I don’t think we would be able to keep with it if we were just adding words to a website. The fact that we’re able to help people get off the couch and explore. The emails that we get from people who have quit their jobs and now earn a lot more working one are a lot more useful than the emails from Paypal notifying us of a deposit.
You can help people in so lots of ways online. The Internet has given everyone a voice and an audience. By working in a field that helps others, you may find fulfillment in your work and in your life.
Not All dollars Are created Equal!
When you have the freedom to work from anywhere, you also have the freedom to go where your dollar is worth a lot more. working in Canada, it’s nearly impossible to get by on $1,500 / month. but in places like Thailand, Indonesia and parts of Eastern Europe, you can live quite well on this amount.
In our case, a lot of of our income comes in the form of us dollars, so when we convert that to Thai Baht, Mexican Pesos or Indonesian Rupiah, we’re doing quite well for ourselves!
There are hundreds of cities around the world where the cost of living is literally half of what it is in places like Vancouver, London and new York, so by living in those places while earning foreign currency, you can literally live twice the life at half the price.
No a lot more getting stuck in Traffic
When Dariece and I worked in Canada, we had about an hour of commute to get to and from our jobs every day. That indicates that when I worked 12 hour shifts, I was actually away from home for 13 hours. Dariece chose to commute by foot for one hou