6 Ways to Become a Digital Nomad

Kristin:    00:00:00    I'm not a massive internet multimillionaire, but I do know a lot of ways to make money online because I've done it. And you can live like queen or a king or a millionaire with a lot less money than you think when you are a remote worker. 

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:43    Hello. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, Kristin here from Traveling with Kristin, and welcome to Badass Digital Nomads. Today is a very exciting episode that is long overdue to be honest. And today I'm going to tell you what the six main ways are to become a digital nomad. In other words, the six paths or categories or types of digital nomads, as it were. And this is a super important topic because that's what everyone wants to do, right? So I've decided to make this into a three part series, which I have decided retroactively because last week I did an episode on how to make money online by monetizing your skills as a freelancer. But that's only one path to becoming a digital nomad. And a lot of you are new to the podcast or you are new to my YouTube channel, and it's very, very likely, very possible that you don't know me, <laugh>, that you're new to my story.  

Kristin:    00:02:01    And you haven't seen some of the uh, videos that I recorded at the very beginning of my channel more than two years ago about my digital nomad story, how I became a digital nomad, and kind of some of the basics of becoming a digital nomad because that's some of the first stuff I covered on my channel. But it was also when I had zero viewers, <laugh> and no podcast. And so very few people saw those videos, only like a hundred people or something, um, ever saw the videos. So I wanted to refresh this information, especially since it's been a couple years since I made the original content about it. And I do have information about what I'm about to talk about in this podcast in my upcoming book that I wrote last year called Digital Nomad 101, but that's not published yet because it's taking so long to write a book.  

Kristin:    00:03:03    Who knew? Who knew it took so long to write a book and edit it and publish it, especially how long this book is. But, uh, I have information more detailed than the podcast version of it will be in the book that you can pre-order in the link in this, in the show notes or the podcast page or blog post of this podcast. And also, I, I did a live stream on this topic in December of 2019 on my YouTube channel, but I only did four ways of becoming a Digital Nomad. So I'm adding two more categories to this, but if you wanna check out that video, I'll also link to it in the show notes as well. So that's what this episode is going to be about. And then the next episode is specifically how I became a digital nomad and my top 10 online income streams as a digital nomad, which is something that people ask me all the time.  

Kristin:    00:04:08    And so that one's long overdue as well. So stay tuned for the next episode after this one and you can learn my 10 online income streams and hopefully that inspires you to make some of your own. So we'll get into that. Um, but first a little housekeeping stuff. First we have merch. Just a reminder, this is the first week of having merch ever. So support the podcast and look cool at the same time by snagging some swag over in the Badass Digital Nomads Teespring store at teespring.com/stores/TravelingwithKristin or by watching any of my videos on YouTube, youtube.com/TravelingwithKristin. And then the merch will pop up at the bottom we have teas, tanks, coffee mugs, bags, cell phone cases and stickers and lots more with um, two designs out already and a lot of really cool colors and different styles. So definitely go check that out.  

Kristin:    00:05:17    We've got hoodies, all kinds of stuff. So check it out. And thank you to the Badass Digital Nomads listener of the week Patrizio who left a review of the podcast in the Apple Store and he says, hands down the best podcast if you wanna learn how to work online and travel the world. Interesting interviews with people that have quit their nine to fives and have been able to get out of the rat race. Yay. Thank you Patrizio for taking the time to leave a review and thank you to all of you. Every single one of you out there listening and learning and taking action to become the best version of you you can be and living your best badass life. I am so here for it and for you. So thank you for tuning in and to everybody who lives out of the us I just today figured out how to see international reviews in the Apple Podcast store by paying for a third party app <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:06:24    So I have like found a bunch of reviews that I've never been able to see before even using incognito mode and using VPNs and trying to find them. So thank you to everybody over the past year who has left review from a foreign country. If I haven't given you a shout out just yet, you are next. So let's jump into it. Let's jump into our topic for today, six ways to Make Money Online as a Digital Nomad. And again, the inspiration for this episode is you guys because this is one of my most frequently asked questions. And as you know, I always say that there are as many ways to become a digital nomad as there are people in the world, but there are also themes and patterns of the most common ways that people do it. So this episode will help give you some ideas of how you can achieve location independence upon reflection of how other people are doing it, which is very helpful in learning and getting inspiration in life.  

Kristin:    00:07:38    Also, remember that being able to make money online doesn't automatically turn you into a digital nomad. It just means that you can make money from home or remotely or from anywhere. And that is what we're all going for. Having the freedom to be able to live and work from anywhere in the world or travel more or live near your family or do whatever you wanna do. It doesn't mean you have to travel full time or live out of a backpack or a suitcase. We're just talking about the spirit of the digital nomad lifestyle on this show to portray how you can make money from anywhere. So if and when you decide that you wanna hit the road when it's not a pandemic <laugh>, if you wanna spend, you know, if you wanna become a digital nomad snowbird and spend your winters in Florida or on the beach in Mexico or the Caribbean, you can do that.  

Kristin:    00:08:44    But if you also wanna spend your, your winter snowboarding and living at a co-living space in Canada or Switzerland or Bulgaria, you do you, this is all about you just having the freedom and flexibility to be able to pack up and go whenever you want and not have to worry about asking for permission or having to go to work because your work is your laptop. So there are no rules and that's what we love about these times that we're living in. And even if it seems farfetched right now to make money from home or, or start traveling and working remotely, just remember that, you know, things can happen fast. If this episode plants the seed for how you can have more flexibility and work life balance and be able to travel more in the future, then I'll be doing my job. But also you can act on this info and start any time.  

Kristin:    00:09:52    The first category of how to become a digital nomad, and this is the most popular widespread one and that's why I put it first, is freelancing, becoming a freelancer, guys, because freelancing works for so many people, regardless of your age, regardless of your career path, your education level, your race, your background, your location, even your physical ability or any disabilities that you might have, there are ways to monetize your skills as a freelancer. And if you want more info on that, check out the previous episode. I think it's 62, if I'm not mistaken. I'll link to it. Um, but I also put becoming a freelancer first because that's what the statistics show. And I did my own non-scientific study on digital nomads in some Facebook groups last year. And I was just curious of how people became Digital Nomads because I was writing my book and I also repeated this at the start of the pandemic, um, when I was doing a podcast with Johnny Fd.  

Kristin:    00:11:09    And overwhelmingly the majority of people who responded to my non-scientific polls said that freelancing was their path to living a digital nomad lifestyle. So this was like 80% of people who responded. And even though there's a margin of error there and the sample size is limited, this is consistent with global research. So I'm gonna hit you guys with some freelancing stats from a variety of countries just to provide some context as to how massive and powerful the group of freelancers are on the planet, and also how realistic and practical it is to become an online freelancer and say, screw the nine to five. And when you become a freelancer, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are making money online 'cause there are things you can do in an independent contractor or freelancer capacity in the physical world like landscaping, things like that. But there are a lot of paths to doing it online.  

Kristin:    00:12:26    And then there are also freelancing jobs that you can take with you to do unofficially in foreign countries. One that comes to mind is personal training. That's something that could be done in person and that's something that can be done online. And I met a lot of expats when I first lived in Costa Rica back in the early two thousands that were doing a lot of things like that, like freelancing stuff or um, personal training. And they could do it on, well, I don't know if they couldn't really do it online 'cause Skype was so slow and the internet was so slow back then, but they created their own business offering personal training services to people in Costa Rica. And this was in like 2004 or 2005. Even if you're not doing, even if you're not providing the freelancing services online, you could potentially offer them in another country.  

Kristin:    00:13:30    But these days it's, it's a lot more realistic to do things online because we have such fast internet and such good technology. So the most recent Upwork freelancing study from 2019 says that 57 million US citizens or 35% of the US workforce, um, are independent workers. And a McKinsey study from a few years before that, from 2016 found that 20 to 30% of the adult population in the US and the EU are independent workers. So even from 2016 to 2019, that figure could have gone from 2020 5% up to 35% in just a couple years. And this seems to be a global trend, which makes total sense just for some comps. There are reportedly upwards of 150 million freelancers in China, 15 million in India, although I suspect with India's population. And how many virtual assistants and, and freelance web developers and people designers there are <laugh> in India, I think there's probably more than that.  

Kristin:    00:14:53    Um, but the research I found says 15,000,004 million in Australia, which makes up a third of the workforce. And the number of freelancers in Europe grew by 25% in seven years to at least 11 million people today. Apparently half of Brazil's workforce is freelancing as well. Half and 12% in Mexico is the official stat, although it's probably higher. And then also a study of 21,000 of freelancers conducted by Pioneer. The online, uh, financial services provider found that, uh, 10% of the global freelancing workforce is located in Africa. I tried to find more country specific data there, but it was pretty difficult to find the numbers, but that's a good estimate. And the other good thing about freelancing is that you can do it in pretty much any sector, any industry, any kind of job background that you have. And that's why such a great path because you can be like that pioneer study looked at freelancers in 170 different countries.  

Kristin:    00:16:12    So it doesn't matter where you are, you can become an online freelancer. And um, there is a really popular stat that's been going around since 2015 by Pieter Levels, the founder of Nomad List, who said in a Digital Nomad X conference, I believe it was in Thailand or Portugal that year, that there would be 1 billion digital nomads by 2035. And that number, he calculated it based on the number of people freelancing. So he basically looked at, okay, how many people will be on the planet then in 2035, it's, it's estimated that there will be 9 billion people on the planet, 6 billion people in the labor force, half of the labor force will be freelancers, and then one in three could become remote workers or digital nomads. That's 1 billion digital nomads. But even now, there's already between one third and half of the workforce in many countries is already made up of freelancers.  

Kristin:    00:17:34    And since the pandemic, the economist found that one in three people is working remotely up from one in 10 people before the pandemic. So you can see that already potentially there could be 1 billion digital nomads this year. I mean, it's possible once people can travel again, a certain percentage of people who are working from home and are working remotely or have lost their jobs or have started freelancing once they can travel or they can move and cross borders, they're going to want to, because travel is a part of human DNA. So if you're looking to become a digital nomad, freelancing is the fastest way. So why, why become a freelancer? It doesn't mean that you're going to make $10 million as an e-commerce entrepreneur in a drop shipping store, but it is a fast and viable way of achieving location independence. You don't need any money to start doing it.  

Kristin:    00:18:46    You can start doing it potentially today. It provides a flexible lifestyle and you can make more money compared to working in a salary job. Um, depending on the study that you look at, most of them indicate that freelancers tend to make more money per hour than traditional employees. Um, in the Upwork study it says that freelancers have a hourly rate of $20 to $30 an hour and that the median skilled freelancer earns more per hour than 70% of US workers in the total economy. So people make more money freelancing in general than they would in their job. And then on top of that, freelancers like freelancing. This is consistent with what we're gonna talk about next, but once people start freelancing, they like the flexibility, they like the independence, they like the autonomy, and they would rather keep freelancing despite some of the cons and stresses that can come with freelancing, which we can talk about in a different episode.  

Kristin:    00:20:07    Um, 'cause we still have five more <laugh> things to talk about. Um, people still would prefer freelancing over commuting to a nine to five job. Also, in that Upwork study, it said, for the first time ever, um, as many freelancers said that they view this way of working as a long-term career choice versus just a side hustle or a side income or a temporary way to make money. And the Upwork study, they've been doing it I think for about six years, and the number of full-time freelancers increased, almost doubled from 2014 to 2019. It went from 17 to 28% Freelancing, it's the bomb. I mean, it's at least realistic <laugh>, I do it. What else do I have for you? 71% of freelancers say that freelancing gives them the opportunity to do their work from anywhere they choose. So this is all consistent with, you know, the, the statistics across all of these different countries and regions and, um, 7 in 10 freelancers want to move and go somewhere outside of a city.  

Kristin:    00:21:28    So the more jobs and opportunities that are online, the more mobility freelancers can have. So not all freelancers are digital nomads, but if you can make, um, a living online as a freelancer, you can choose to become a digital nomad or you can be a digital nomad sometimes and other times not, and just have a home base, but be able to work from home or from your RV parked in a, you know, national park somewhere or from a co-living space or wherever you want. So that is the number one way of becoming a digital nomad. The second most common way is by getting a remote job. As I mentioned, the economist found that one in three people can work remotely compared to one in 10 previously. And a firm called Global Workplace Analytics estimates that 25% to 30% of the workforce will be working from home most of the week by the end of 2021.  

Kristin:    00:22:38    And I personally think it's going to happen faster. I think that people are tripping if they think that things are going back to normal. Like I keep seeing these articles about companies that are saying that they're reopening their offices at the end of the year. This is more for the US and countries that are still in lockdown. I think countries that only were shut down for one or two months or even three months and then reopened, they're not gonna have as distinct of a change in the workforce. But countries like the US that could be closed for a year or more are gonna have the most severe change when it comes to, uh, workplace culture because they will just won't be able to go back to the workplace in time for their habits and procedures and human behavior to change. But anyway, that's a topic for another day, but a lot of people are working from home right now and most jobs can now be done remotely.  

Kristin:    00:23:42    I found another stat at two thirds of people in the UK are working from home right now. And overall that number's just gonna go up. So there are going to be more remote job opportunities, and that is a really straightforward way of becoming a digital nomad. So if you like the idea of the reliability and the consistency of having a monthly salary with the comradery of working on a team, even if it's a remote team with other people around the world and working towards a common goal at a company, then having a remote job could be the right choice for you. So I hope that you're thinking as I go through each of these options, like which one resonates with you the most? I might say freelancing and your ears perk up, or you're like, no, you're like the no emoji with the X Arms <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:24:44    Like, no way, never doing that. Um, or you might hear remote job and think the opposite. You might think, you know, I know people who freelance or work for themselves that are like, I'm never gonna get another job as long as I live. I don't care if it's remote. And then there's people who are like, I don't wanna wonder where my income's gonna come every month, even if I could make more than I could in a job, I just wanna chill and like have a job that's not very stressful that I could do from anywhere and get a free laptop and free coworking membership and healthcare and company perks and, uh, vacation <laugh> and holidays and all of the other good things that come with having a remote job. Hey, I get it. I've never had one, but it, it looks great, to be honest.  

Kristin:    00:25:35    It's probably a lot less stressful than working for yourself. And the only caveat here is that you have to find an employer who would let you live anywhere or become a digital nomad and not just be a stationary employee working from home. So, and that is a big, but because a lot of companies right now are calculating remote job salaries based on where people live, or they're saying you have to log in in a diff a certain time zone every day, or you have to be located in a certain state or a certain country for tax purposes. So you need to keep that in mind if you think that you wanna travel long term. There's also people who just don't tell their employer that they're traveling, but that seems risky to me. And also they end up working super crazy hours because they don't want anyone to know that they're on the other side of the world.  

Kristin:    00:26:37    So they just stay up all night and pretend like they're in California, but really they're in Japan. And you know, I don't know, it's not optimal. So if you're interested in more about how to find a remote job, you can download my free guide to finding a remote job. It's on my website Traveling with Kristin, and I'll link to it in the show notes. And I, I'm also planning a training or a masterclass on how to find a remote job. It might be an hour or so just on finding a remote job and different strategies and tactics and like screen recordings of me going through stuff. And that is not done yet, but I'm building that for the people in my Facebook group and I'll link to that here in this episode. Show notes when it is ready. So if you're listening from the future, like years in the future <laugh>, then check that out or months in the future. Obviously everyone's listening to it in the future, but you know, depending on when you're tuning into this episode, I'll update it so it will be there.  

Kristin:    00:27:50    The third way of becoming a digital nomad is starting an online business. And this is a very important category because it's a very versatile way to make money online like freelancing, but more formalized and more developed. You don't have to be running an online business in your name. You could have a completely different company, you could have multiple companies doing different things. It can include your personal brand or it can have nothing to do with you. It can be totally anonymous and online business can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a personal consulting company, an Etsy storefront, an e-commerce store, or really anything that you can dream up and you know, you could sell whatever widgets you want online. Or you could also create an agency or a business that provides support to other businesses and other entrepreneurs. So whereas freelancing is more of a one-on-one exchange of services and online business could have to do with offering services or selling products or a combination of those things or creating a new technology or an app or something like that that I'll talk about later in the show in a different category.  

Kristin:    00:29:28    But, um, I've seen a lot of people creating online businesses that do things for other online businesses. So it could be an accounting or bookkeeping company, it could be a Facebook ad agency, it could be a social media management company. Um, there's so many things that, that you can do with an online business, but it can take time, money, and some investment to start a business, more so than becoming a freelancer, for example, or finding a remote job, which is something that takes time to apply for jobs, but it won't cost you anything to set up and you won't have any monthly business expenses <laugh>. Um, but with starting an online business that's a little bit different. So if you want me to do a separate episode all about how to create an online business, that's a very broad topic, but let me know on social media at traveling with Kristin, I also have a whole chapter of my book dedicated to online business, um, online businesses specifically for digital nomads, like which online business models work for digital nomads.  

Kristin:    00:30:48    And so I recommend that too. The fourth way of becoming a digital nomad, making money online to support yourself from anywhere in the world is through setting up passive income or automated income streams. Now, passive income has become a massive buzzword, <laugh> on the internet because it sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, passive income, free money forever, that comes from doing nothing. But it's not really like that. I mean it is in some ways, but let's just define passive income. <laugh>, um, I put or automated because I think that could describe it a little bit better in most cases. But so just to sum up again, passive income is where you make future revenue based on work or action that takes place today. So you do work once or you take an action one time and then you make money again from that action.  

Kristin:    00:31:55    So that could be from, let's say you have an affiliate marketing company and you have created an advertisement that converts well. So you could scale that ad with a lot of traffic and you know that you are going to convert a certain percent of them into paying customers or into people who are buying something that you are getting a percentage on as an affiliate. And as long as that ad is converting, you don't have to do anything, you don't have to tweak it, you just have to make sure the ad is running. And so technically if you did that really well one time, that could fund your lifestyle for like the next year. So this could be with a funnel, for example, you could have a funnel with a piece of software like click funnels that has different offers and different upsells. And once you develop the funnel or the products that it's selling and you tweak it and you have it converting right, and it's there and it's set up and you just have a landing page where people are going into the funnel and buying things at different price points or whatever happens depending on the funnel that you created, then that's technically passive or automated income.  

Kristin:    00:33:25    But you have to put up a lot of work or effort or expertise, you have to have something upfront to be able to make that money later. So there's a lot of different ways to do this, but let's also use investing as one way you could invest in financial markets or stocks or real estate and in the action of investing, whether you're doing it in a big one-time amount or investing like a day trader every day. I mean, that's kind of active work, but let's say you have money that is passively being invested into your portfolio at a predetermined rate or under predetermined conditions, and you're getting a return on that investment, whether it's monthly or annually or whatever it is that's passive income. Or if you have money to buy a house and you turn that house into a rental property, you might own a physical property or multiple physical properties that have tenants that pay the mortgage, that pay the insurance, that pay the property taxes and cover your living expenses.  

Kristin:    00:34:46    And so if you just own three or four rental properties, you technically might not ever have to work again, especially once those properties are paid off and the mortgages are paid off. So you don't have to actually work to be a digital nomad, but if you have enough income coming from your investments, then you could technically just live anywhere and spend the money that goes into your bank account. <laugh>. So these are just a couple examples. Um, some other examples are creating content that can earn passive income into the future. So you spend time writing a blog post or creating a YouTube video or something that you put time and effort and work into once. And then that blog post, let's say if you have, um, you're doing a review of of WordPress software or something, I don't even know if that's a thing. Is there WordPress, let's say WordPress templates or plugins or something and you have affiliate links in there.  

Kristin:    00:36:05    If you write a really good blog post that's getting traffic on Google and people are taking your recommendations and then buying the products that you are recommending, that is a type of automated income as well as with YouTube videos. If you spend time researching, hello, I've done this a lot of time, um, making a video, but then two or three or five or 10 years later you could still make, um, some passive income from AdSense from people that are watching that video years into the future. I've actually met a lot of YouTubers that got burnt out and after their channels got to like a million subscribers, they just quit <laugh> because they didn't wanna do it anymore. And they are still making a livable income off of those channels and they don't really work or they just do other random stuff now and, and different kind of like passion product projects, but they don't have to have a full-time job.  

Kristin:    00:37:13    Um, writing in the Medium partner program is another activity that counts as passive income. Um, because I can write an article, I could spend 10 or 20 or 30 hours researching and writing an article, but if it's a good article that performs well, it could make thousands of dollars and then it could keep generating income from people who read it a year from now or two years from now. So the only thing about passive and automated income is that if you stop nurturing your passive income streams, they could eventually dry up. And I've had this happen with <laugh> with a lot of my passive income streams, um, because I lost interest in that type of business model or, um, you know, I was doing other things. And it's like if you don't, sometimes if you start with one income stream as a digital nomad and then you start adding other streams, just make sure that you can maintain the streams that you have when you add new ones because I have made that mistake, which you'll learn in my next episode about my 10 online income streams.  

Kristin:    00:38:36    You could have one massive income stream that dwarfs 10 other income streams or you could have, you know, 10 income streams, but two or three of them make 90% of your income per month. And the other ones are smaller. So it's a trade off. But passive income, automated income, Airbnb arbitrage, all types of these things are ways of becoming a digital nomad. The fifth way is starting a remote company. So starting a fully distributed company like a startup. So in the past, startups have started in tech hubs or in incubators and they've had to raise money so that they could meet payroll, but also so that they could start physical offices and have their startup teams there with them in the office. But that is, that kind of startup is kind of becoming a dying breed because of the pandemic, but also because of technology in general.  

Kristin:    00:39:45    Tech firms and tech companies were the first types of organizations to adopt remote work before the pandemic because they were the ones that were on the cutting edge of technology and they were the most adaptable and they were more agile and could change and adopt these, you know, remote work norms faster than traditional companies and faster than brick and mortar companies. And one of the big benefits of being a founder and starting a startup is that you can start lean, you can bootstrap, you can really, um, adapt to your surroundings. You can think ahead into the future and make decisions based on what you think is going to happen and proactively respond in a way that other companies can't. So this might be a more advanced way of becoming a digital nomad, but I definitely follow some people on Instagram that are pretty low profile.  

Kristin:    00:40:50    I don't even know how I found them <laugh>, but they're, um, startup founders or entrepreneurs who started companies and you know, they don't have a personal brand or anything like that. They're just out there creating technology and creating products and creating companies and managing everything from their laptop and hiring remote teams in countries around the world and just spending their time living all over as digital nomads. And they don't have a head office and they never have. So the good news is not only could you do that before the pandemic, but there are many more venture capital firms now looking to fund people specifically who have ideas for remote companies or remote business models. Um, so of course your startup doesn't have to be about remote work, but there is a lot of capital out there for people who have an affinity for remote work and have ideas about how to improve remote work and how to make it better.  

Kristin:    00:42:03    So that's an opportunity that's out there right now where you could potentially have no experience as a digital nomad, but you are good at a thing <laugh> and you have an idea for a business, whether it's an app or a product or whatever, and you just want funding. And you might be able to get funding from somebody in a different country or a different city or a different state, and they don't care where you are. So you, you could just live in another country and they could invest in your company or in your startup idea, but you don't have to go move to Silicon Valley or London or wherever it is that your investors are. So one example, but there are many is Remote Capital who is, that is run by Andreas Klinger, who is the, I think he is head of technology, I forget his role, but he works for, he's an executive at AngelList and he has a fund that is looking to fund basically remote workers and um, people with ideas around remote work.  

Kristin:    00:43:21    So I will link to his site in the show notes. I'm not affiliated with him, but I follow him on Twitter and so I see his stuff and um, yeah, but since Coronavirus the secret's out, so there must be so many venture capitalists right now, um, with extra money because less people are in Silicon Valley and they're able to fund more companies with lower writing, lower checks. So they're diversifying their investments more and, um, that's gonna happen for the foreseeable future. So there's definitely an opportunity here for people that, um, want to become like a startup founder, entrepreneur and also want to be a digital nomad. And last but not least, the sixth way of creating an online income that allows you to become a digital nomad is through creating a personal brand. And this is a more long-term strategy, but like freelancing, it's something that anyone can do no matter what your age is, no matter what your industry is.  

Kristin:    00:44:40    And this isn't going to be the right fit for everyone because like I said, I know a lot of digital nomads with no personal brand making six or seven figures a year live in Livin' La Vida Loca in Hong Kong and Singapore and in Bangkok and all over the place, and they just lay low, but they make bank. So you don't have to have a personal brand <laugh>. Um, but if you want to, if you want to be in the business of being you and monetize your identity, you can make money online doing a lot of different things. You can attract more freelancing clients, you can sell online courses and info products or digital products, um, to your audience. You can write books, you can attract, uh, company sponsorships or product endorsements. You can land speaking engagements, I mean, and so much more. There's really no limit to the ways that you can make money with a personal brand.  

Kristin:    00:45:47    Um, and the reason I started creating content and creating a personal brand is because in my previous jobs, so my first job, which I'll talk about more in the next, um, in next week's podcast, my first job was as a real estate agent in Costa Rica, but I worked for a franchise. So my personal identity was never very important when it came to getting clients. I mean, people came to me because I was living there and I was helping people find properties there, or they came through, uh, companies I worked with like Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, um, or through ads on the website. But when I transitioned out of real estate, I realized that everybody who I knew and the whole customer Rolodex that I had developed as a real estate agent in Costa Rica was like no longer relevant in my life. And I kind of had to recreate my whole identity in my next business, which was my relocation company.  

Kristin:    00:46:59    So there was some overlap there between real estate and relocation, especially for the first year or so, um, when I was still maintaining a residence in Costa Rica and I was doing a lot of rentals in Costa Rica and relocations in Costa Rica, which I still do, even though I don't live in Costa Rica. Um, but I had invested seven years in building my real estate business. And when I decided I didn't wanna do that anymore, which I decided a few years before I actually quit doing it, by the way, I think I decided probably three years into being a realtor that I didn't wanna do it anymore. And then it took me four years to quit. Okay? So if that's you, don't worry <laugh>, you might've been thinking about quitting your job for like five years and you haven't done it yet, but that's totally fine. You have time.  

Kristin:    00:47:54    Um, yeah, I realized that I had to change basically my personal brand and then I spent another, what has now been nine years with my relocation company, but also like a few years into that I was like, okay, I, I like helping people move to different countries and I like working with my clients, but now everybody only knows me as the person who helps people move to Costa Rica or to Canada or to Mexico. And I was like, what if I wanna do something else, then I have to start over all over again. And which I did <laugh>, I started over for the third time, but this time I decided my brand is going to be Traveling with Kristin because there's two things I know for sure. My name is Kristin and I love traveling. So <laugh>, this brand that I create can live with me, it can grow with me, it can evolve with me, and it can do the same thing for you.  

Kristin:    00:48:59    Your personal brand can be an extension of who you are, what you know, what you're passionate about, what you wanna help people with. And you can have different revenue streams coming from that, but you're never going to stop being yourself. So maybe I went a little crazy 'cause I did everything at once. I was like, I'm gonna start a podcast and I'm gonna start a YouTube channel and I'm gonna start writing. And I wanted to do all of the things that I always dreamed about doing, but was always afraid to do. I kind of did them all in one year and I don't really <laugh>, I don't really recommend that, but um, you can start with with just your personal brand and expressing yourself about your area of expertise and the things that you know about and you're gonna attract the right people and then you can always build on that and diversify your revenue streams later.  

Kristin:    00:49:53    So, you know, there's a lot of famous writers and podcasters and people not even famous, but just like famous in their niche, you know, and they are themselves like people like James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits. He is been writing on his blog for like six years, eight years, I don't know, maybe even longer. Don't quote me on that. I did not research that before this episode. But, um, yeah, he's just been writing about things that he knows about and is curious about and wants to share about and help people with for years and he'll do that for the rest of his life. And there are, um, you know, so many people in the business space who do that. And that is the cool thing about creating a personal brand. So, um, yeah, you can just be yourself and you can attach your personal brand to whatever way of making online income, uh, resonates with you.  

Kristin:    00:50:57    So that could just be to grow your online business or it could be to, you know, speak in front of audiences or something else. So, or you know, become Joe Rogan, who knows <laugh>. So there you have it my friends. There are the six main ways of making an online income that can lead your becoming a digital nomad, starting with the most popular way. So we have becoming a freelancer, getting a remote job, starting an online business, setting up passive income streams, starting a remote company or creating a personal brand or some combination of those things. But like I said, don't do them all at once. Start with one thing, dial it in, take your time, crush it, and then add something else. My friend Aal, he, I just saw, he started a podcast and he's been writing for six years and he wrote three or four books and now he started a podcast like that to me.  

Kristin:    00:52:04    I was like, that's good <laugh>, do that. Um, you know, pick one thing, add a second thing, a few years later add a third thing and then you could have like this empire of your online revenue streams. And then when a pandemic or something happens, you won't care. I mean, you'll care because it's horrible, but you'll be protected because you will have more than one income stream. You'll have more than one client, you'll have more than one source of revenue. So if you found value in this episode or learn something new and enjoy this podcast, please leave a review in the Apple Podcast store or wherever you listen. We're on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Play, Libsyn. Some episodes are on SoundCloud, but we're pretty much everywhere. So leave a review wherever you listen. Uh, tune in is another one. And make sure to check out the previous episode on How to Monetize Your Skills as a Freelancer.  

Kristin:    00:53:07    And the next episode, which is about my top 10 online income streams that have helped me exist as a digital nomad for more than 10 years. And as I mentioned, I'm not a massive internet multimillionaire, but I do know a lot of ways to make money online because I've done it. And you can live like queen or a king or a millionaire with a lot less money than you think when you are a remote worker. You just have less living expenses, you have different living expenses, and you can travel more and you can just have more freedom as a digital nomad. So I've always kind of laughed as I was starting out living in foreign countries, unlike one or $2,000 a month helping multimillionaires invest in real estate so that they could have the lifestyle I was having at like 22 years old. I was like, what's going on?  

Kristin:    00:54:12    Somebody is doing this wrong. It's probably not me because like I'm living in Costa Rica at 22 and these people are retired and like just now starting to, to travel. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you don't have to wait until you're retired and have millions of dollars in the bank to be able to live abroad or travel more. You don't have to invest in property somewhere. You know, you can live lean and, um, I've been making six figures pretty much every year since I graduated from college in 2005. So I'm not the richest person in the world. I'm not Bill Gates or whatever, but I do know how to make a good living online. And I know that you can do it too. I know it. You can definitely meet or exceed your salaried income from your traditional job as a online freelancer or remote worker, and you can have a better quality of life. So share this episode with someone else who's interested in making money online or becoming a digital nomad or having more freedom and someone that you think that, um, this information would benefit. And see you guys next week.  

Kristin:    00:55:45    Thank you so much for listening. And remember, you can support the podcast and look cool while you're doing it by checking out our new merch over on teespring.com/stores/TravelingwithKristin. We have t-shirts, tank tops stickers, coffee mugs, hoodies, cell phone cases, bags and more. Again, that's at teespring.com/stores/TravelingwithKristin.