When you travel you need money. It’s the one thing you can’t escape
from. There are various ways to make
money when you are abroad, some of them easier than others. One thing you should always ensure is that
you have a backup source of money. Being
in a strange place without any money at all is not fun!
Teaching
I have already posted on teaching and you can see my
thoughts on it here. Teaching is
probably the most popular way to fund your travels. I don’t think it is for everyone though. It can restrict your travel as you have to
sign a contract to stay in one place for a certain amount of time. If you have a bad experience whilst teaching
it can ruin your travel experience. If
you read the post that I have linked to it will give you a good idea if it is
for you or not!
Blogging
You can make money through blogging, however, it isn’t
guaranteed. This is something that you
have to work on. Don’t leave home and
expect to get a million views on your blog within a month. It won’t happen. You need to have something that interests
people and you also have to spend a lot of time gaining an audience. It’s not as easy as is made out! If you do have something interesting that you
can blog on though it is possible to make money.
The way you make money through a blog differs. You can sell advertising space on your blog
and you are then paid for every time that someone clicks on that advert. This is a very slow process though, you’ll be
lucky to make anything when you start off.
You will have to build up a social media following and get them to visit
your blog. The most important thing is
to get people to come back. If you have
something to sell you can also use your blog to sell. There are far more authoritative and useful
guides to blogging than this so you will be best off Googling and seeing if you
think it is a feasible way to make money for you.
Voluntary Work
Working voluntarily may sound a bit contradictory as this is
about ways to make money. You can find
voluntary positions that will pay you a living allowance and provide
accommodation. They are few and far
between these days as voluntary work has become big business, especially in
Asia. Companies will charge people a lot
of money to do a few weeks voluntary week in a far flung country.
IF you look through http://jobs.goabroad.com
you may find voluntary work that does
not need you to pay. Personally, I have
found voluntary work in India, Cambodia and Vietnam that paid a living
allowance. They may ask you to stay for
a certain period of time, but voluntary work is very fulfilling if you can find
the right place.
You will really have to search hard to find these kinds of
voluntary positions. In the future I
will be doing a post listing as many as I can find.
WWOOFing
WWOOFing involves living on an organic farm. You have to help out but they provide you
with a bed and meals. I haven’t done
this myself, a friend of mine has and they said it was pretty good. He did it in Argentina and although the farm
he stayed on was pretty out of the way he enjoyed it. There’s probably quite a lot of hard work
involved and it may only suit certain types of people but if you are on a
budget it is certainly an option.
Bar Work/Repping
This is probably only suitable if you like to drink a lot
and/or you are quite extrovert. A lot of
bars in tourist spots will look for foreigners to help them entice customers
into their bars. From what I know it isn’t
very well paid, but you can survive. They
usually give you a place to stay and will allow you to drink as much as you
like! Certain hostels will also allow
you to stay for free or heavily discounted if you do some promotion work for
them. I know some bars in Sihanoukville,
Cambodia definitely do this. It may
involve dressing up in silly clothing but if you get a free night, it will save
you money in the long run! My advice
would be to go to bars in areas with lots of young tourists and just ask.
Travel Writing
You could link travel writing up with your blog and go it
solo or you could find somebody you could write for. There are lots of blogs out there that are
looking for guests posts, there are also websites that are looking for people
to write for them. The downside is that
it is not very well paid and although it sounds like the dream job it is not
very rewarding unless you are doing it for your own pleasure. You are probably not going to have travel
websites queuing up to take you on, don’t take that as indicative of you being
a poor writer, it’s simply because there are so many people out there trying to
do it. It’s definitely worth investigating
if you have been somewhere very few travellers go, that way your article will
be unique.
Ecommerce
This one is probably a bit more difficult, although there is
potential to make quite a lot of money.
I have done this myself, I gave it up because I am not really a
businessman and didn’t get much enjoyment out of it. The shop I set up did do fairly well so it
wasn’t a failure and it gave me enough money to live on and keep
travelling.
The best way to go about it is to find a niche market and
then open an online store. You will
however need someone who can dispatch your stock for you. If you can do that then you are on your
way. You will have to look after the
online store and reply to customers, you will also have to do the marketing
yourself but if you have a laptop and internet you can do that from pretty much
anywhere. The links below are to an online store that has everything set up for
you.
Photography
There are websites out there that will take your pictures
and then sell them on to a third party and you then get a cut of that money each
time your photo is downloaded. I am not
an expert on this and all I can really say is that is possible. Below are some websites that will help you
out.
This list is certainly not exhaustive and there are plenty
of ways you can make money as you are travelling. I have met people that put whatever talents
they have to use. If you’re an artist
you can paint or draw and sell your pictures, if you are a musician you can
find bars that will let you do gigs and hopefully pay you for it. If you can build websites, you can do that on
the move. Like I said at the beginning
of this post, make sure that you have so money in case of an emergency! At least a ticket home.
Hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading. I will be posting a list of places you can
find voluntary work that you do not need to pay for in the next couple of days!
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