7 Location Independent Jobs to Extend Your Trip Indefinitely

We’ve all felt it. You’re on a trip, sipping a Pina Colada on the beach in some tropical paradise and you have to be at work on Monday. You start thinking how cheap it is here and if you could only think of a way to make a few hundred bucks a week, you could stay indefinitely. Well, there are many people who act on this. Here’s what they generally do.

Photo of Bali by Bram and Vera

English Teaching – Ok, this isn’t the most exotic or lucrative option, but it is almost certainly the easiest. You can get by very well on an English teacher’s salary almost anywhere in the world and these jobs are easy as pie to get (despite what you’ll hear in online English teacher forums). Depending on where you are, you can also get paid pretty well. And living in the third world is cheap as chips, so you don’t need that much money anyway. Check out Dave’s ESL Cafe for information on your specific destination with regards visas and finding a job.

Web Design – If you’re even a little proficient at web design, then it’s not too difficult to make a few hundred bucks a week which is plenty to survive on in the third world (and you will get better with practice and earn more with time). As long as you have an internet connection and a laptop, you can get online and find people looking for these services. Just sign up at RentaCoder, GetAFreelancer and ELance where there are plenty of web design jobs you can bid on.

Photo of Goa by Don’t Panic

Graphic Design – Same as above, but if you’re a maestro on Photoshop, and you can work fast then there is no shortage of people online looking for your skills. You’ll probably have to start out cheap, but once you have a reputation, you can start charging more and more. Again, try GetaFreelancer and ELance to find people looking for your skills.

Coding – If you’re ok at PHP or ASP then you can make a reasonable income working remotely in some tropical paradise. Plenty of coders live in Bali or Goa for example. Start bidding on jobs at the websites above or simply tell your boss or clients that you will be working remotely from now on.

Writing – Not the most lucrative, but if you can write fast you can make a decent living. Plenty of webmasters need fresh content constantly. If you can find them and churn out content fast, you will probably do ok at the cheap end of the spectrum. Alternatively you can go for high paying gigs with magazines etc. and live the life of a freelance writer. I have done both of these types of writing and personally prefer getting the higher paid gigs. However they are hard to come by and if I really needed money fast, I’d happily churn out some content for very cheap. Find cheap gigs at places like GetaFreelancer as well as internet marketing forums like WickedFire, Sitepoint and DigitalPoint. If you want the expensive gigs, then get yourself a copy of the membership at Writer’s Market and start writing query letters.

Photo from Panama City by gaby Maldonado

Webmaster – A lot of people who manage to travel perpetually do it off the back of the money they make from a website or two. Basically this is professional blogging. A couple of examples include Nomadic Matt, Gary Arndt, Nerdy Nomad and Working Nomad. Go through their older posts to see how they do it, but it’s basically a combination of advertising and marketing that gets them a reasonable income and the ability to keep on travelling. Awesome!

Consulting – This one kinda requires that you have customers or contacts already, but consulting to people in the first world when you’re living in the third world can easily pay the bills. With a decent internet connection, laptop and skype you basically have all you need to impart your expertise on people who want it.